Fertility treatment to resume

[barbites]

Great news if you are having fertility treatment. Not sure why this is a priority given all the critical treatments and investigations put on hold.
Would really like dd to get her braces put on at the Orthodontists but obviously it's closed. Don't understand why fertility treatment has been prioritised?

Totally irresponsible to think about getting pregnant right now.

We are in the middle of a pandemic ffs

I'd rather see cancer treatments (not necessarily chemo) resume.

@barbites I completely agree with you, and I think what you are getting at isn't the fact your child needs braces that have been delayed, it's the fact that who is deciding what treatment trumps what.

@ivfgottostaypositive
Pregnancy isn't always a straightforward scan every few months you know. Lots of complications can happen. Which means you would then be in a vulnerable shielded group and having to attend antenatal clinics and doctors. Very much doubt there is an at home service this sounds more high risk for the midwifes than them staying in their sanitiser clinics.

Your attitude is well if I've paid for it, it trumps someone who can't afford to pay for their treatment! So as long as you can buy a child that's fine and a case of it's tough for those can't afford private life saving treatment for physical killer illnesses.

Some of these women have only months left before legal cut off and so need their treatment now.

No one needs fertility treatment. I am infertile, not a yummy mummy looking at it from a place of privilege.

I'd rather see cancer treatments (not necessarily chemo) resume.

These are broadly still being carried out in private hospitals. The Princess Grace in London is currently closed to private patients and is providing NHS cancer care instead.

Close relative is not getting life extending non chemo treatment so it isnt across the board.

I dont think fertility treatment should be a priority here. We need to get to the point that it is only offered in very specific situations as it's costly and completely non essential.

@barbites I had a smear yesterday. They are still going ahead. Which life saving treatments are not going ahead?

We need to get to the point that it is only offered in very specific situations as it's costly and completely non essential.

As long as we treat all other life improving but not life saving treatments the same way. Ruptured your ACL? No need to get it fixed on the NHS, plenty live without one, do your physio exercises instead.

It does only seem to be fertility treatments that cause such angst for being “non essential”.

If you’ve ruptured your ACL, something as basic as walking can be impossible. It can be impossible to do your job and earn a living to support yourself and your children.

Not really the same as having a treatment where if you didn’t have it, you could carry on as normal, and physically pain free.

I also think it's a bit weird that out of all the treatments they could have started on....they chose fertility?
Why not treatments that help people not be in excruciating pain, or treatments that might prevent death, or give people hope of regaining some sort of a normal life?

People really aren’t getting it they did not “choose fertility” out of all the other treatments. The HFEA considered options for resuming fertility treatment and decided that it can, in theory, resume based on criteria. Whether and when all clinics do resume is a separate matter.

Other medical bodies are presumably looking at the treatments appropriate to their sector and deciding on a clinical, medical basis what can and can’t be resumed.

This is by no means a question of what was a “priority”. The HFEA couldn’t look at cancer treatments that’s not their area of expertise. If it was a case of lifesaving surgery for someone vs fertility treatment of course life saving surgery should be chosen but that’s not what has happened, and misrepresenting it as such to bash the infertile (for whom this further wait can be both mentally, and in some cases like mine physically, agony) is either ignorant or cruel.

@NailsNeedDoing if you think that without fertility treatment all those experiencing infertility can just carry on as normal you seriously do not understand what it’s like to be in this situation.

Kiki, I do. I still dont think the NHS should fund it. Sure, harvest eggs/bank sperm before cancer treatment or whenever else it is clinically possible. But beyond that, no, I dont think the NHS should fund it.

Are people really this stupid?

It’s not a case of someone centrally lining up all the treatments and deciding that fertility treatment tops the list and should take priority over cancer, ffs.

The body overseeing fertility treatment have assessed the risk of resuming treatments and have announced that they will be putting measures in place for this to resume safely

It literally has zero affect on ANY other treatment.

They're restarting all services that they can. As long as there's enough PPE to go around, I don't see the problem. I don't have a new date yet for each of my hospital appointments, but MIL's friend has already been for her scan and had a biopsy booked, so I'm expecting both soon (I missed one by two days because of when we were locked down). I don't want a gynecologist or other fertility expert though, I want the trained experts in the relevant fields. I'd also like to see the dentist, but I understand why that's more problematic to restart, seems pretty obvious no? If hospitals are so overwhelmed in Jan-Mar from covid there's a much bigger issue.

"@NailsNeedDoingif you think that without fertility treatment all those experiencing infertility can just carry on as normal you seriously do not understand what it’s like to be in this situation"
Of course they can carry on as normal. Much more so than someone in excruciating pain or dying. You dont see hundreds of people walking about or crawling along the floor wailing and think "oh, they've got infertility ".

"It literally has zero affect on ANY other treatment"
It does if it increases footfall in hospitals.

TabbyMumz but that makes no sense? As PP have pointed out, many fertility clinics aren’t attached to hospitals at all, and are stand alone buildings. And even in hospitals, fertility departments aren’t sharing a corridor with cancer patients?

Who would want to conceive right now anyway? Infertility treatment should always be privately funded IMO.
The NHS should be used to cure existing people, not fund the creating of more.
I am sure infertility is horrible and heartbreaking but we can't all have everything we want in life.
My own smear test was cancelled in March and I was told a new appointment will be arranged in a few months.

Dyrne my local ACU is part of the main hospital which has cancer patients, older adults and respiratory clinics attached.

Why make even more waiting lists and backlogs we don’t need?

If Dedicated ivf facilities and staff are standing idle and it’s safe to restart, why would anyone object?

I do see that if you have years of reproductive life ahead of you, it might be sensible to delay ttc for 12-18m, but that is rarely the case by the time you’re attending an ivf clinic.

Coronavirus has already destroyed so many lives and families, it seems really uncharitable to deny others this glimmer of hope because someone else has to wait extra time for their treatment. It’s not a competition.

"TabbyMumzbut that makes no sense? As PP have pointed out, many fertility clinics aren’t attached to hospitals at all, and are stand alone buildings. And even in hospitals, fertility departments aren’t sharing a corridor with cancer patients?"

What a weird thing to say. Do you think all hospitals are designed the same? Every hospital is different, not the same . In our hospital it's off the main corridor that runs right through the hospital, so anyone going there will walk past many different wards.

"Coronavirus has already destroyed so many lives and families, it seems really uncharitable to deny others this glimmer of hope because someone else has to wait extra time for their treatment. It’s not a competition"
The government should be working hand in hand with all the various depots in the NHS, and it makes common sense to allow those with the highest need, to open first. If fertility opens first, that's a higher footfall in the hospitals, which might then delay other more necessary and important wards to open.

@TabbyMumz that’s a disgusting attitude. There are lots of conditions where people aren’t crawling around in pain, but I can have empathy for them, and realise that if you have say for example anxiety you cannot necessarily just “carry on as normal”. Have you experienced infertility? If not then I don’t think you have any right to comment on how easy or otherwise it is to carry on as normal.

In any event I am frequently in excruciating physical pain and my gynaecologist has told me fertility treatment may resolve this, not that I need to explain about my health conditions to you or anyone else.

Please try to have some empathy, and think about what you achieve by being incredibly insensitive to people whose mental health may well be badly affected.

TabbyMumz of course not all hospitals are designed the same. That’s exactly my point.

Don’t you think that individual clinics are going to apply a bit of common sense? For example limiting numbers or even moving to other dedicated central clinics?

My have people read “Fertility clinics may apply to resume from mid-may” and read that as “selfish bitches will be barrelling down hospital corridors booting cancer patients out of the way to hog all the resources”.