The clinics response

I'm utterly miserable today. I got a call this morning from the public IVF clinic who told me that the reason my referral was cancelled was that at the time of the referral my BMI was 40. Apparently their rules dictate that just to get ON the waiting list, you need to have a BMI of less than 35. So you can't be on the waiting list and lose weight so that you meet the weight limit while you wait the 18 month or so until your first appointment. No, you have to meet an arbitrary weight limit before you get even close to a first doctor's appointment.

 

I asked how they advised people of this, and supposedly the referring GP would have received a letter back with that information – which of course we have never received or been told about by our doctor. I have booked an appointment for tomorrow morning to see my GP. The clinic said that the only way we could be reinstated on the waiting list (and reinstated to our second referral date of July 2012- thank goodness my fertility doctor insisted on writing a second referral), is if my GP writes a letter to say that I met the BMI limit at that point, because they never re-checked my weight on receiving the second referral (they just assumed I would still be over – great work guys). The problem of course, for those who have followed my weight loss journey, is that I was still over the 35 BMI then. So in essence, my doctor will have to lie if I am to have any chance of being reinstated to the list, regardless of the fact that I am now well under the BMI limit.

 

I can't see why they have this policy in place. I am supportive of a policy that says we will not pursue fertility treatment if the patient is over a BMI of 35 – the literature says that success rates decline after this point. Even though I have struggled with my weight, I really do understand this, especially in a public health context where we are not paying for the service. But to force people to lose the weight, which is often a long drawn out difficult process, before you can even get onto a waiting list which could take two years, well I just don't get that. After all, you could have a BMI of 35 at the time of the waiting list, and in the time between put weight on, but who would ever know? I could have lied and said I was under the BMI when they asked at the time, after all they didn't weigh me, it was just a phone conversation from the booking coordinator.

 

I am so angry and upset and flabbergasted. That the policy is in place, that we were not told at the time, that we had to find out after being so excited that this would be the year we could start trying again. I'm sitting at work trying to hold back the tears. I have worked so hard and made a really difficult decision to have surgery to help me lose this weight, the primary reason being that it would help us have a baby. Yet none of that matters right now, because of stupid rules that don't benefit anyone.