The Waterloo Consultation

Super-Secret Post
Recap of the end of Month 26, composed near the present since I had no contemporary notes

We were pretty excited about our consultation in Waterloo. We had been referred before we left Vancouver so we had an appointment waiting for us within three weeks of our arrival. With 4 cycles between then and my work placement, I figured there’d be no problem getting our 2-3 bank-up IVF cycles done by March (the idea being that we wouldn’t transfer any embryos and bank them all; the idea was from our doc in Vancouver).

Right away, things felt very different. Our clinic in Vancouver felt like a private clinic: chic waiting room with bottled water, fancy decor, wifi. The fertility section is separate from the obstetrics offices so there are infertility magazines and no toys or anything. There aren’t any babies or pregnant women in the waiting room.

Waterloo’s clinic felt like a random doctor’s office. It turns out they also do OBGYN services in the same space. It had only parenting or pregnancy related magazines and lots of babies and pregnant ladies.

Other things about the clinic were better. The clinic really is *full service* as in you only ever visit the one building no matter what you need done (scans, procedures, even simple bloodwork that had been farmed out to public labs by the Vancouver clinic). And parking was cheaper. Ok, maybe that is all that was better.

The biggest blow came when we learned that they were going to do an investigative cycle to test us for everything again. While it’s true that it would check more things and use less inference and more direct information, it was extremely upsetting to learn that the running around we did between February and July was mostly worthless.

On the other hand, at least it would all fit into one cycle, plus two weeks to get the results back and go to another consultation.

On the third hand, cutting out another two cycles was hurting our chances of getting things done before March.

Begrudgingly, we agreed. At least the timing worked out that we would not lose more than two cycles (one for testing and one for results) – office closures at Christmas could have screwed things up, but they didn’t.

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