Royal Pain in the Butt...



Today I received our consent forms for the cycle.  The “royal decree,” if you will.  As in most fairy tales, we need to know what the rules are for the next leg in our journey.  I thought it would be exciting to get the forms...more information (ahhhhh sweet information)…a catalyst of sorts.  Something that would sling me into a “go-getter” attitude about this donor cycle.  It wasn’t everything I had hoped for.  Instead, the more I read, the more I cried.  Instead of being a royal decree, the forms have been a royal pain in the a$$.

The donor coordinator messed up the medications she had previously told me I needed to supply, meaning I have to pay $1500 more for meds than I had anticipated.  The financial information is also different from what I had been told.  I was told I would pay $4200 and my insurance would be billed for the rest…and that I might even get a refund from the $4200 depending on what the insurance covered.  But the consent form says that I have to pay $6200 up-front or $4200 and $167 per month for 12 months.  There is no mention of my insurance coverage or of any reimbursement.  I’m so frustrated.  There is other paperwork (like our expected medication schedule) that is not filled in.  There are medication directions that are contrary to what I have been told by my clinic and contrary to what I have been taking right along.  It all just makes me sick.

I know, in my head, that this is okay.  The important stuff (like my name, the Prince’s name, our donor number, etc.) is correct on the forms.  It is just clear that the donor wasn’t paying very close attention…okay…not paying attention at all when she filled out the majority of the consent forms.  It will be okay.  Even if we have to pay more money up-front, it’s not like we don’t have it in the bank (barely).  I won’t be happy…but I know it will be okay.  Nothing so far, even the medication screw-ups, is a deal-breaker for our cycle.  But for someone as detail-oriented as I am, this is like a slap in the face.  I want to yell “Don’t you understand how important this is to me?  If your only chance at getting the most important thing in your life depended on you getting information right…I’m betting you would pay closer attention to what you are doing!”  I won’t yell, though.  And I know I’ll even stop crying (soon).  But right now, I’m really angry.  I don’t know what is going on in this woman’s personal or professional life that might account for the oversights, and I probably should be more understanding and less quick to judge.  But if being an egg donor coordinator was my job, I know I would be empathetic and would make sure that I made everything as smooth as possible for the couples involved.  This woman does not do that.  She clearly did not even proofread the “royal decree” before she sent it to me.

My husband was told in marriage counseling this morning that he needs to be “the rock” this cycle.  He needs to step in whenever he can to help out.  The Prince has always been willing to deal with the donor coordinator…since the first time she made me cry.  But I am never willing to let go.  I think I feel like everything is so out of my control…I have to keep the communication with the coordinator as “mine,” because it is control over information…and that’s something.  However, when the Prince said today, as I cried and complained about the forms, “Let me deal with her from now on.,” I said, “Okay.”  I will make the phone call on Monday to try to straighten things out…only because I am the one that directly received information from the coordinator contrary to the information she is now providing.  After that, any more bumps in the road are going to be handled by the Prince…even though he doesn’t know an egg from an embryo (still).  “Let go” is frequently my yoga intention (the thought or goal you strive for and focus on during a yoga session).  So…I’m practicing letting go by taking this one step…and it is really scary.

A Life Well-Scripted

When I was a little girl, my friends’ parents hated me.  They would like me until they overheard me at play with their children, engaged in a "conversation" that usually consisted of only me being allowed to speak as I told the other kids, “Okay.  Now I’ll say [this] and then you will say [that] and then I’ll say [this] and you will respond [that]….Then you stand over there…No!!!  Not there…there!”  And, as if my playground dictatorship wasn’t already bad enough, I would frequently "pout" the other children into submission if they resisted my rule, sulking and crying when I didn't get my way.  No one likes that little girl…not even teachers.  I still have my nursery school “report card” from when I was three years old.  On it, my nursery school teacher described me as “a mother hen”…which I now realize was her diplomatic way of saying I was a "bossy brat."

I would love to tell you that I have grown out of my “bossy” phase, but I haven’t.  I frequently catch myself saying to my husband, “Why can’t you just tell me I’m pretty?” Or, “You should have just stopped talking after [insert nice thing he said and delete obnoxious thing that came after].”  My husband’s frequent retort is “Just pretend I said that.”  It hurts my feelings when he says that to me, but someone has to keep my “bossy tendencies” in check, and I think that is what he is trying to do.   

Even the profession I chose feeds into my bossy nature.  As an attorney, I don’t get to boss people around, but my job does require me to persuade people that I am right.  Persuasion is really just a more subtle form of being bossy.  My job is to get the judge or clients, or whomever I am writing for, to say what I want them to say or to take the position I want them to take, without me coming out and telling them what to do.  One might say I’ve upped my game since nursery school…from “mother hen” to “professional manipulator.”  

It doesn’t give me any pleasure to admit these things about myself.  And, contrary to what one might expect, I don’t behave the way I do because I think other people are stupid or because I believe I am always right.  I simply have a need to be in control.  If you script a situation or a conversation, you have complete control over how things will progress…and you can be prepared for the future because you have seen what it holds…you wrote it.  By scripting my life, I’ve managed to choke out all the “messiness” that makes me scared of what is to come.  The problem with my approach is…life is messy.  Without the mess and chaos and spontaneity, there is no joy.  Life has become just a giant chess game for me.  I find myself spending so much time planning twenty moves ahead that I never actually move at all and I certainly don’t enjoy the game.

In my battle with infertility, I can’t script how each cycle will turn out.  If I could, I would have been pregnant a long time ago.  So, since I can’t script the outcome, I script every tiny detail of each cycle…obsessing about what supplements I take and when, producing inventories of my medications and needles, going through baby books to pick out names for a child I haven’t conceived.  I figure out when my due date will be if the cycle works, then modify it when the cycle changes, then modify it AGAIN when the cycle changes again.  Based on when the due date is, I decide what major holiday or event I will use as my big “I’m Pregnant” coming out party.  Two years ago I scripted how I will tell my husband that I am pregnant (I bought a maternity shirt that says “$$ Tax Deduction $$” on the belly, and I keep it hidden in my closet until the big day arrives).  I script and re-script how I will announce a pregnancy to our parents, our friends, and our employers.  And, when I have nothing left to script, I make a back-up plan for the cycle after the next cycle…so it won’t seem so devastating if the cycle I’m in doesn’t work out. 

Even this blog is a sort of script.  I write, as an author, the story of my fertility journey…pretending that I have total control over the ending of the story when, in fact, I don’t.  Maybe it is okay to have this crutch…this one place where I can pretend that I am scripting one of the most important situations in my life.  But the reality is, I don’t have control…and that is absolutely terrifying to a “mother hen” like me.