We are happy going with the ABC fertility clinic, we have decided on a donor and the donor sperm has already arrived at the clinic, so we need to do just one final day in London with various appointments to get everything sorted.
Because our first appointment is at the crack of dawn, we stay overnight in a cheap hostel just by St Paul’s Cathedral. It smells musty inside our little room. The carpet is dirty. We have small metal bunk beds that squeak whenever we turn. There are no towels, so I dry myself after a quick foray into the disgusting shower with a bed sheet. It’s sort of funny. It’s terrible.
I can hear the bells of the cathedral ring all through night. After the early morning alarm we get ready in the dark, and when we step outside it is still dark and raining.
Our appointment is in a huge skyscraper in the City of London, smack-dab in the middle of the banking district. We take the lift down to the basement, and end up on an actual clinic recovery ward – it’s all little cubicles with treatment benches.
This is where I will be after my surgery.
An anaesthesiologist comes by our little cubicle to talk to us.
We’re meeting him because our clinic is concerned about my asthma being a problem during the egg collection surgery.
I feel as if it’s all going to be a major waste of time, as if he’ll laugh it off. I’ve been sedated before without breathing problems, I don’t even take medication for it anymore.
He doesn’t see it that way though, he seems genuinely concerned. He asks me multiple times whether I’ve been to A&E because of my asthma. I haven’t, not even close!
It takes several minutes of me trying to downplay it as much as I can while the anaesthesiologist ums and ahs, but in the end he agrees that if I take steroid inhalers for two weeks he’ll allow me to have surgery. Jesus! I don’t know what we would have done if he would have said no.
We are dismissed, and walk back to the shitty hostel, both of us a little shaken up at what we thought would just be a formality.
It’s great that they’re that thorough in wanting to make sure I’ll be okay. I’m all for me not dying during surgery! On the other hand they are so very cautious it feels a bit like overkill to me. Bourn Hall never mentioned it being considered a problem at all. They would have sedated me without checking. It’s really obvious how different their approach is at this point.
It’s still so early in the morning that when we get back to the hostel I lie down onto the bunk bed and nap a bit.
The bells are so loud I am woken up again every fifteen minutes.
When we check out of the hostel later and pass by St.Paul’s again, I make a mental note to go burn a candle when it’s surgery time.
You know, just in case ;)
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!