Ministerial response

I received a call back from the Minister for Health's office this afternoon about our situation with the public IVF clinic. The clinic repeated their claim that they sent a letter to my doctor, which I wasn't impressed with. However the ministers office have arranged it so that, both Murray and I need to get new referrals from our GP, but rather than going to the back of the waiting list, we will be guaranteed to be seen within the next six months! We need to ensure that we reference the ministers office and this arrangement on the referral, but this is great news!

So by July, we will be on the fertility treatment bandwagon again. To be honest we have tried nearly all the options available to us. We have done ovarian drilling, IVM, IVF, Donor IVF, Donor IUI, FET, Donor FET, the works. The only thing we haven't really tried is PGD which is prohibitively expensive and I'm doubtful is covered at the public clinic. Admittedly I am in much better health now than I was during many of these attempts which is encouraging.

We are unsure what we will do in terms of the donor situation. We still have our known donor friend who I'm sure would be happy to assist us, but I believe all of the samples have been used so we would need new samples, more waiting periods, and it all starts getting too much again. We may go back to the donor sperm we planned to use initially from the sperm bank at our fertility clinic, but who knows if that is still available. I'm also open to doing more donor embryo transfers if they become available, however considering we have the option of doing full IVF again, I feel the need to give that a try.

I would also like the clinic to do a full rundown on Murray's sperm before we go down the donor path again. I know the odds are against us, but things may have changed since the last SCSA test, and perhaps his motility and DNA fragmentation issues have improved. I can't help but think that the only time we have been properly pregnant, not chemical pregnancies, but really pregnant, it used his sperm. We've had 2 Donor IUI's and 2 donor embryo transfers, none of which worked (0/4=0%) compared to 1/6 = 17% with Murray's sample. I don't know. I know we likely still need donor, but if the tests are at our disposal, I'd really like to check it first anyway.

So good news all round right now. Trying not to get too used to it, you never know when the next bomb will drop. But so far the adoption and IVF processes are on track. We've just got to keep plodding on.