Doing IVF when you are (for e.g.) a hospital consultant - cancelling people’s appointments last minute

[Derx]

I have put this in chat as I worry it may not get seen very much in the Infertility topic.

If you have a job in which you have appointments with the general public. And these appointments have been booked a while in advance and are highly anticipated by them… for example, hospital consultant, surgeon, and so on.

How do you reconcile this with doing IVF, when you can’t predict with certainty what days you need to go in for scans and blood tests, you may be told on a Tuesday scan you have to come back for a Wednesday scan, and so on?

Do you just have to cancel people last minute or can you tell management not to book any appointments in over a broad (say) two week period?

I know many private clinics offer early morning scans but in mine the earliest is 8:30.

This is such a goady thread

Why? Presumably OP has one of those jobs and is planning IVF and now has to talk to her employers about how appointments are supposed to work? Nothing goady about it.

How?

Or she’s doing IVF and doesn’t have one of those jobs but is just bricking it about telling work and she’s just wondering how women with more restrictive work timetables handle it.

I’d say this is an occasion you put yourself first. It is the job of the hospital management team to arrange suitable cover.

How is it goady? Some of us have these jobs and also need IVF.
It's difficult as to get the flexibility you need you need to explain to someone why you need it when you probably don't want to tell them. I'm fortunate that when I did it I was in a position that was fairly flexible and I closed my diary for the definite appointments and then did have to cancel for unscheduled which I felt bad about but this is definitely one of the times you have to put yourself first. I've had several junior colleagues go through it since and have covered for them and picked up anything they've needed to cancel. I've also known people get signed off for the whole time or use a block of annual leave. Good luck.

Why?

I had a (male) psychologist whose wife was going through IVF. He did just cancel appointments when the clashed, often without much notice.

I did a mix of early morning appointments and only pm clinics at work. Luckily my clinic was on route to work. I then went no clinical contact after implantation as I knew i wouldn't have my mind fully on work. I kept my manager in the loop and he was very supportive .

I am a teacher and so it’s hard to just drop everything and go in for appointments.

What I managed to do was get all my scans over lunch and get someone to cover my class for 20 minutes before the lunch break.

Not even sure how to respond to this

sympathies. I am a hospital consultant and took several years for success at ivf. It was very stressful. I chose a clinics that were local to us.

We had a choice of two, i changed from the 1st after a failed cycle as i found it impossible to keep in contact with them - they would only contact by phoning me and if i couldn't take the call we'd end up with a day of telephone tag missing each other.

the other clinic was only a 30-40 min
drive away and much easier that they used a web based messaging tool so we could keep up with messages and new appointments, and they also had scan appointments available from 7.30 am so i could get in early before driving back to clinics etc.

otherwise yes there were occasions when i had to decide if i was going to cancel a clinic - i was quite entitled to, i could have actually taken a bunch of time off for ivf, its a contractual right (worth looking up), but that ended up being very infrequent thankfully, with a bit of help from the clinic for early and late appointments and some flex etc. i do wonder if i hadn't been so concerned about continuing to work and help others i might not have taken so long to get here (baby due next week) , but one can't know really

Thank you very much to those sharing your experiences. It is such a balancing act. I know how frustrating it is when these longed for appointments are cancelled, especially at short notice, and so I know I will just feel awful having to do this. Especially as I wouldn’t be able to share the reason for the cancellation.

Maybe I can speak to my manager about shifting the start time of the appointments to later in the morning. That’s a good idea, thank you.

Please put yourself first. You put others first all the time. This is time for you to put yourself first.

I'm a consultant and can only relate this to my experience of severe migraine.

Have cancelled a lot of clinics at very short notice.

This is obviously terrible for patients but ultimately as a doctor the first person you have to look after is yourself.

I worked with a teacher in this situation. She told a couple of us at work that she was undergoing treatment and we would cover her classes when she had appointments.

No it really isn't. You, on the other hand seem quite unpleasant.