The Egg Drop Post

Okay, so I said that I was grateful for the healthcare that I have (and I am) and that I wasn’t going to write anymore posts like this where I completely ravish the U.S. healthcare system, but I think I was a bit premature. And here’s why…

I got a call from a former colleague of mine who is doing some research on lesbians and health care. She says she wants to draw attention to the disparities of healthcare access between het and queer women, her ultimate goal is to provide community-based solutions to a documented problem, so she contacted me for advice (don’t ask me why). Ironically, her inquiry sent me into a tailspin. I think I’m dealing with some PTSD, not be confused with my oncoming PMS. Her inquiry triggered a lot of painful memories that I suppressed during the last year and a half.

It all started when I was speaking to the nurse practitioner at my doctor’s office. I told her that I was 36 and wanted to start seeing a reproductive endocrinologist. She asked me if I had been trying to get pregnant unsuccessfully for one full year—well, not exactly, I said, “I’m a lesbian and after speaking with my gyno, my partner and I decided that I need to get aggressive and meet with an RE as soon as possible”.  “Well”, she sighed it’s going to be a bit challenging because I can’t put lesbian down as a diagnosis”. So that is how I became an “infertile”. It  turns out that the diagnosis was somewhat accurate but  the exchange still stung at the time.  I understand that the nurse practitioner was a bit player in an very lucrative medical drama aka U.S. healthcare, but she definitely made me feel like there was something wrong with me and that I was trying to get away with something.  However, my gyno advised me to get that referral based on my age—not my sexual orientation.

Fast forward to  my 5^th IUI’s and my encounter with Dr. Killjoy—not my normal RE– who after seeing my ripe-sized follicles told me that I should “come in the next day for an IUI and have intercourse with my husband that night just in case”. I gasped. Naked from the pants down, I was feeling very vulnerable, and just incredulous that I had been going to that office for at least seven months and yet he knew nothing about my lesbian identity.  I felt completely invisible. You should read the entire post here to get the full effect of the maddness. He’s the kind of doctor that doesn’t want to answer any questions and makes a lot of cultural assumptions.  Eventually, we worked it out for that cycle—“Obviously I can’t have sex with my husband, Dr. Killjoy so do you want to take two aspirin, think about the proper case of treatment in this situation and call me in the morning?” Needless to say, that experience made me doubt myself and my place on the TTC hamster wheel. “Should I really be doing this,” I asked myself as I looked at the stirrups, feeling invisible. I mean, who do I think I am to be messing with nature? I’m generally very vocal, but not typically when I’m half naked.

And then there are just the countless times that the nurses forget and ask me if my husband has “deposited his specimen”; or the times that I’m called to the examining room, and Nadia and I both get up and everyone looks at us and hush falls over the room. It’s disappointing because I’ve been told that this practice has a 30% lesbian clientele yet they have 10% sensitivity to the issues and that’s based on personality not on any kind of formal training or mandate, at least not that I can see. So, it’s been hard. Crazy-making. Difficult. And it adds an extra dimension to the gut wrenching nature of the TTC experience.

I mean after a medicated IUI cycle, which for me goes something like this… ten visits to get my vjayjay wanded at 6am,  12 nights of  shots of menopur in the gut, one trigger shot, two IUI’s and then one  eviscerating visit from AF, it’s hard to think about getting up and going back to the RE the next day to get back on the TTC hamster wheel. That alone is hard enough. I shouldn’t have to worry about making folks cringe or ducking when they mess up and ask for my husband.  It’s uncomfortable and often painful.So I’ve suppressed a lot of this. And it wasn’t until I got that phone call that it  all came rushing to the surface. Ugh.

At the same time, I feel guilty for writing this. I’m spoiled because I have access to assisted reproductive technology and Dr. Killjoy and Dr. Feelgood are considered experts in the field. ART is a mind-blowing technology.  IVF  just gets better with age so I’m very lucky to have the chance to do it now and the fact that I have insurance to pay for it makes me one of a chosen few.

So the waiting, the hoping, the crying, and the raging is really hard.  I guess, in the face of so much uncertainty, the only thing I know for sure, is that this experience has altered me. And I will never be the same.