Infertility Awareness Conference

I am all to painfully aware of my infertility, almost 8 years is not a short walk in the park at all. On May 2nd, Daniel & I attended an Infertility Awareness Conference in our area.

Let me just say that infertility does not plague just one “type” of person, male or female, it does not care, it is willing to ruin anyone’s lives.

When it was time for the first speaker, I looked around. Every table was full. There were young couples as well as some much older couples.

The announcer person said loud into the microphone “I am so glad to see such a great turnout this year”. This very statement made me so sad, mad & made me feel sick.

How can one be “glad” to see 300 couples in one room, broken from something so painful.

I must say we got a lot of information that day, some things we knew about, other things that sounded hopeful.

All the Infertility doctors that spoke that day had all kinds of wonderful treatments and hopeful, happy news but not a single one of them touched on cost, at all.

It all sounds great, looks really freaking sexy on paper too, that is until you find out all the costs. I might as well just say I am infertile because of money!

They had a male speaker come, a father, a husband, to speak about his infertility story. I thought this odd because the men don’t usually speak out, but I was all ears.

He told us his story and it ended with him being the father of a 3 year old daughter with the help of IVF. It was a sad story, all of our stories are sad. Not once did he speak of cost & how he paid for it.

In infertility, not much is a secret, so why is the money talk kept under the blanket? If you know something I don’t, freaking tell me and I will do the same for you.

At the end this man asked if there were any questions. I sat there for a moment, hoping someone else would ask the burning question. No one did.

I raised my hand and asked him how he had afforded 4 IVF cycles. He told me it was a good question, go figure!

His answer was not satisfactory to me and I’m sure others. He simply stated that he is still paying on them. I am assuming that means they took out loans. He did manage to say they had to cut things out of their life, extra stuff.

Thank you for that answer Mr.Man!

There were 4 IVF doctors on the panel and each was giving away IVF cycles at this conference. We were all given a ticket at the beginning, we were to deposit our ticket in the box of the doctor we would like to have do our IVF at the end of the day.

The time came and we chose a doctor and knew our odds were terrible, considering all the people there. Our number was not called, no big surprise there at all.

I will say that it did put a little bit of bitterness back in my mouth and turned the dial from compassion to anger.

This to shall pass…right?

This entry was posted on May 13. 2009 at 07:58 and is filed under Money, IVF, Infertility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.