(In)fertility, part 4: Nurse Clusterfuck

Ok, so where were we?  Oh yes, Josh and I had just finished filling out the reams of mind-bending paperwork regarding the fate of my eggs, his sperm, and the potential for a power outage at the embryo freezer.  The next step was to meet with the nurse to plan out the schedule and learn how to do the injections.  No biggie, right?

Um, yeah.  Remember my clusterfuck post?  Well, in case you’re still not clear on what a clusterfuck is, read on.

After the doctor reviewed our paperwork, she reminded us that we needed to schedule an appointment with the nurse to go over everything. As we walked out, I talked to the receptionist about a time that might work, and I noticed that she didn’t put it in the computer.  I asked about that, but she said it was fine, Nurse Clusterfuck (not her real name) would definitely be here, and we just needed to show up.  I was concerned about this plan, but I didn’t want to be That Patient.  As a (mental) health care provider, I know That Patient and I don’t like That Patient – you know, the one who is uppity and rigid and needy and annoying and assumes you can’t do your job and bugs you to high heaven about every last detail.  So I kept my mouth shut.

Moron.  We both took time off work and school, we showed, and she didn’t.  Strike 1.

So, we rescheduled, and this time the receptionist was mortified enough to put our appointment in the computer.

We show up to the next appointment, and are promptly ushered into Nurse Clusterfuck’s office.  Oh dear G-d.  That should have been the first warning.  Ok, actually, it was my second warning, and I should have said something, but… well… you know – the whole That Patient thing.  Josh and I carefully oh so carefully make our way through her narrow cave of an office, sucking in, holding our elbows tightly so as not to disturb one of the precariously balanced mountains of paperwork and brochures on either side of us.  There was one tiny little chair wedged between a bookshelf and a small table overflowing with more crap, and Josh and I somehow managed to smoosh ourselves onto it.  He was held in place by the bookshelf, and I remember holding on to him so I wouldn’t fall into her boxes and papers on the table next to me.  Strike 2.

Nurse Clusterfuck has wandered off somewhere, so Josh and I take a minute to survey our surroundings.  Almost immediately our eyes land on her computer screen, which is turned on, and has her patient dashboard up.  For this of you unfamiliar with this sort of thing, it means that we can CLEARLY see the full names, ages, and diagnoses of about 8 other patients.  I hope that any of you readers who are familiar with HIPAA (or at the very least, the notion that medical information should be kep private) are having the same reaction that Josh and I had at that moment – a mild coronary followed ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?    Strike 3.  She should be out, but she’s not.

As Josh and I are working very hard to not look at her computer screen, Nurse Clusterfuck returns and begins madly shuffling through papers to try to figure out who we are and what we are doing.  I try, as calmly as possible (while still holding on to Josh to avoid falling off the one chair that we are sharing), to remind her that no, we aren’t doing IUI, we are going straight to IVF, no we have never done IUI, no, really.  Finally she seems to understand the words that were coming out of my mouth, shuffles through some more paperwork, figures out who we are, and what we need to know.

The first step is to explain the injections to us.  I have blocked out most of the details, but I do remember that the first series of shots was pretty straightforward – insulin syringes and little bottles of liquid.  Fine, I thought, we can do that.  After that we moved on to the needle with the huge barrel and multiple dials.  This was an important shot, and required turning the dials just so, and hearing a certain series of clicks in order to make sure that the right amount of medication was being loaded and dispensed.  The amount depended on the results of some testing I would have right before taking the shot, so we couldn’t preload it at the doctor’s office.  The nurse reminded us how important this shot was, and told us stories of patients whose whole IVF cycles were screwed up because they didn’t get THIS SHOT right.  Josh and I nodded somberly and paid close attention as she started to demonstrate.

Her sample syringe was broken.  Of course it was.  Now, I ask you, dear reader, of presumably reasonable intelligence (although you are wasting time and precious brain cells reading my blog, so it’s hard to know), what would you do in this situation?  Yes, that’s right, after scaring the crap out your already shell-shocked patients, after smashing them in the corner, leaving them hanging on to the tiny-ass chair for dear life and hoping that the tower of outdated brochures about chlamydia doesn’t fall on them, you would go find another syringe. That’s what you would do.  Because you’re not a Clusterfuck.

Nurse Clusterfuck, however, is a different story.  She keeps fiddling and twisting and plunging away, muttering about how it should work this time, now it will work this time, even though the damn thing is clearly broken.  Meanwhile, Josh and I are trying to avoid making eye contact with a) her computer screen, so as not to reread the confidential information glaring at us, b) each other, so as to avoid bursting into tears (at least on my part), or c) her, as I was on the verge of grabbing the syringe out of her hand and sticking in it in her eye.  Strike 4.

(And thus the baseball analogy goes terribly awry.)

Once she is convinced that the Super Complicated and Super Important Syringe is broken, she hands us a piece of paper with instructions and assures us that it will be fine.  Josh and I nod numbly as she pulls out what can only be described as The Shot That Could Be Called a Horse Shot Except Even Horses Would Be Scared Of This Fucking Needle.  Seriously.  This thing was at least 4 inches long, and wide enough that an ant could drive a very tiny car into it.  Seriously.  I could look down the shaft of this needle.  I did look down the shaft of this needle.  Nurse Clusterfuck is just about to start explaining how this particular syringe works when her phone rings.  Rather than ignoring the call because she is, oh, WITH A PATIENT, she proceeds to have an extended conversation about another patient and the effect that her genital herpes will have on fertility treatments.  (I still remember the patient’s name.  It’s burned into my brain.  My mother remembers where she was when she found out Kennedy was shot.  I remember that Sally Jones (not her real name) has genital herpes.  You know.  Like that.)  So there I am, hanging on to Josh, listening to a conversation about another woman’s genital herpes, and staring down the barrel of the death needle.  Strike 5, bitch.

By the time she gets off the phone, I have gone into shock.  Or something like it.  My brain is no longer processing information, and all I can think is, “I have no idea what we’re supposed to do.  How is this possibly ever going to work?”  Actually, I don’t think I was even capable of putting together that many words into a sentence at that point.  It was probably more like, “We’re fucked.  We’re so fucked.”

The rest of the session was a blur.  I remember Nurse Clusterfuck pointing at dates in the calendar, counting over and over again, but somehow the dates never came out the same.  The thing is, you have to get it Just Right otherwise the whole cycle is shot (ha!), and you have wait a few months to start all over again which may not seem like a big deal unless you have been trying to get pregnant for over a year and you felt old before you even started and now you feel like your ovaries are shriveling up right before your eyes.  Needless to say, we wanted to get it right.  As we left the nurse’s office, I really didn’t see how that was a possibility.

And that, my sweet readers, is a clusterfuck.

Post-script:  After this meeting, Josh and I decided to buck up and be Those Patients.  We contacted our doctor (who is great) and told her what happened.  She responded professionally and appropriately, and we got an appointment with another nurse who met with us in her nice, big, organized office, and took the time to walk us through everything, functional syringes and all!  Needless to say, we ended up getting it right.

Also, I feel compelled to say that the feedback we got about this nurse from her colleagues was entirely positive, and they have the utmost regard for her work with patients.  Perhaps she was having a hard day.  Hopefully she has better interactions with other patients.

Coming soon:  In which Carla’s reproductive system is hijacked.