I'm an Advertising Manager and though I'm not some mega bitch corporate climber who sleeps next to her BlackBerry and spends the evening thinking of media buying opportunities and messaging strategies, I'm still a consummate professional. That means that I play hooky once in a blue moon like everyone else and just as rarely I'll blow off a call or an email 'cause.....well.....'cause I'm fucking busy - and you just have to prioritize.
BUT when an expensive, top notch infertility clinic is on my payroll, I expect to get a call back. I asked the CCRM nurse yesterday to have the finance person email me a detailed, itemized payment schedule so I could see for myself what is and isn't included. I don't want to be dinged mid-donor-egg-cycle with another charge for 5K for legal paperwork and extra insurance for the donor. I'll pay every cent that is owed but I demand to know IN ADVANCE what I should expect to pay and not when I'm already so far in that I'm screwed to stop and screwed to continue. No, I want my choices NOW, not later - thank you very much.
And I don't know if it's intentional but I received no email, though I was told I would, from the finance person. Maybe the list of charges is so huge, my company's firewall blocked the 10MB file. Ouch! Hope not! :)
I'm holding out a slight bit of hope that it'll arrive WITH the big packet of donor information and paperwork I need to fill out prior to my one-day work up in Colorado (hopefully in 2 weeks). But I don't know anymore.
I started to have these problems with my NJ fertility clinic during my donor embryo cycle. The nurse assigned to me is the nicest person, truly - sweet as pie and very gentle in her demeanor. You might have noticed by reading my blog but I don't absorb a lot of value from that. My last nurse (during the miserably-failed-IVF-turned-IUI cycle last March) was much colder but on top of her game. She called me every single day she was supposed to (or if I'd left her a message to call) by 2:30 PM, precisely.
And that's what I appreciate. I don't need a nurse who's going to cry with me if things fall apart; I need a nurse who calls me back on the day she's supposed to and earlier in the day than 6 PM. I need a nurse who appreciates the fact that I rarely ever call and leave a message. In 8 months, I've done it 4-5 times - I'd call that RARELY! Hey, all things being equal, it's not bad to have a nurse that's super sweet and responsive but since I live in the real world and accept that personalities are so often two sides of the same coin, I acknowledge they don't come in the same person. The Type-A personality nurse will call me back by 2:30, have all the answers to my questions, will call in the prescription to my pharmacy and set up my next appointment all while she's performing a hysterosalpingogram, so I don't really mind that she reports my beta as "No Mother's Day card for you this year." What I do mind is nice-nursey who would probably rock me in her arms, patting my head and "there, there, you'll be a mom one day, you'll see" but she knows shit about the quality of the embryos, what the last beta indicates, hasn't spoken to my doctor in over a week and wastes precious few moments in our conversation apologizing for neglecting to call me for two days because she's been swamped. Save it sister, I read the book. Wanna make it up to me, call-me-fucking-back next time!
I don't think I'm an elitist, truly. In fact, I hate elitism. And though I believe you should have a clean room, fresh sheets and a safe stay at Motel 6, I also don't delude myself. When you're renting rooms for $32/night, something's gotta give - and that's usually quality, the first thing to ALWAYS give when money's short. But I'd rate my current (actually former as of yesterday) clinic as pretty top notch and CCRM holds the #1 spot in the country. Women from Dubai choose to fly to Colorado to treat their infertility - and I think it's a safe bet those ladies could afford IVF on Jupiter if it existed. Their rates are also the highest. So I want CCRM to provide service that's a lot closer to that of the Burj Al Arab in Dubai than the Motel 6 in the Ozarks!
2 comments:
Yep, you should get top notch service. IMHO, that should be any clinic because no matter where you go it is expensive emotionally as well as financially.
If CCRM doesn't work out for you, you might want to check out The Center For Reproductive Endocrinology in Washington. Their DE rates are as good as CCRM. They have less donors to choose from and I don't know how their costs compare.
Kami, thanks so much for the advice. And yes, I don't know of anyone out there practically giving donor cycles away for free so it's expensive any way you look at it.
This is such an emotionally charged experience. I feel for anyone that has to fork out tens of thousands of dollars to achieve what someone else does for free (and, often, by accident). :)
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