Gah, doctors

One particularly irritating thing about the egg donation I have decided to do* is the amount of contact I have to have with doctors. I am yet to meet a doctor who doesn't have some serious personality flaw that s/he lets out to play during patient-doctor interactions.

I used to go to the university clinic, until the doctors there made me cry one too many times.

Then I picked a random doctor out of the phone book, and turned up to find that he made me fill out a form that included such information as "marital status" and "religion". His receptionist, one of my students, told me she has to hide her feminist studies homework from him because he gives her such a hard time about it. Needless to say, I wasn't about to go to him for the egg-donation-related tests I have to have.

So I went back to the university clinic, hoping I had just been unlucky in the past.

When I made the appointment, I handed over the list of tests the IVF clinic had given us for me to have done, and specifically asked (1) if there was further information they would need, and (2) if I could have an appointment long enough to do them all.

These are actual things the doctor said to me during my visit:

"What, you want a pap smear AS WELL? You'd better realise you are going to be charged for an extra long visit today."

"This list of tests says, 'cystic fibrosis'. Do you want the Delta F test or the 33 mutagens? [...] How can you not know? If you come in here wanting medical tests, you need to find out which ones you need."

"How do I do a chromosome test?" (Um, I thought YOU were the doctor. Don't you have ways of finding this sort of thing out?)

"This is all going to cost you. I hope you're well off." And when I explained that my friend is covering the costs. "Hrmph. Then I hope your 'friend' doesn't mind that you don't know which test it is you need. If we do the wrong one she'll be paying for useless results. In fact, why don't you phone the clinic now and ask which cystic fibrosis test I should do?"
"Sorry," I said, "I don't have a mobile phone."
"Why not?"
"Um. Well. I never seem to need one."
"You need one NOW, don't you?"
Yeah. Because the doctor's phone, sitting right there on her desk, must have been mysteriously out of action.

And then she took six different blood samples for the tests, which, as a phone call from the pathology lab told me later, were taken in the wrong type of tube, and so can I please go across to the other side of the city to have them redone at the hospital, please?

The next installment in this exciting adventure is Thursday, when I have an ultrasound scheduled. My instructions are to drink a liter of water an hour beforehand, and not to pee until after the appointment. I can't wait.

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* I was planning a post on the reasons for my decision, but really, it's kind of boring, so suffice it to say that I looked thoroughly at all the literature I could find on the topic, including medical journals, and it seems to me that (a) the risk of known side effects is acceptably low and (b) the unproven risks, which may be of more concern (e.g. increased risk of cancer later down the track) have less evidence supporting them than e.g. the dangers of storing food in plastic, or using mobile phones, or various other modern conveniences which I'm not about to give up. I was pretty comfortable with the non-medical side of things already, and added to that it's not often you get a chance to change someone else's life so much for the better, or to "try before you buy" with something like having kids. So I feel pretty certain that I've made the right choice.