Impatient

I don't like Patience. Not the word, not the f***ing awful Bon Jovi song, not the concept. Maybe the flower? Oh wait - that's impatiens - much more my style.

But I thought I was doing an okay job of being all philosophical and willing to deal with our clinic delaying IUI treatment for another month. And okay, so it turns out freezing techniques do terrible things to our donor's samples, so our odds are actually pretty lousy. But you'll still let us try this month, won't you? They were going to tell me last Friday, then I was promised an answer yesterday. While the rest of the country was hanging around to see whether we'd finally know who would be Prime Minister for the next couple of years , I was waiting for a phone call from our clinic. Finally, they called, and said, yes, you can go ahead as long as you have an appointment with Dr Sp.ermLibrarian so he can explain exactly what lousy chances you have using IUI and why you really should be spending $7ooo a month to do IVF with ICSI. Okay, yes, I can have an appointment, that is fine - just give us the bleeping sperm and let me get on with my delusion of thinking that I am doing something towards falling pregnant again...

But the problem, only apparent this afternoon, is that Dr Sp.ermLibrarian is all booked out until mid October, and no, treatment can't go ahead until I've sat in a consult with him and listened carefully to him telling me just how bad our chances are with IUI. Mid october would put us out for two cycles. When I pointed this out, the receptionist was kindly able to find us an appointment for 4 october. But that still means that we miss this cycle. So I'm leaving crazy-lady messages for the Clinician who made this decision (but who has never met us), and then when her receptionist called back to tell us to talk to the Drs at the Womens, leaving crazy-lady messages for them too. Little do they know that isn't half of the crazy. If this goes on, well, there might just be a huge crazy-quake in which I stage a full public melt-down in the foyer of the Womens.

This feels like a bizarre form of torture by bureacracy. I can't call any of the people who can actually change the decision which affects me. Most of them have never met me. I have told everyone I speak to, 'you know what happened to us, don't you - you know that we lost our baby at 8 months?' and all the receptionists and "donor managers" apologise and express their sympathies, but tell me their hands are tied, not their decision.

I'm at the stage of saying, just give it to us and we can at least do a home insem this month - go on, play along with my delusion that I have some control over what happens in my life, please!