Hello all! I was wondering if I could get your input on my situation - keen to hear what you would do in my place. In short, after a series of really unprofessional and unpleasant incidents involving my IVF clinic, I’m debating whether I should move my frozen embryos that are stored with them to another clinic. We’d likely still need to use these embryos for another child in the future, but I just dread going back to my current clinic due to several incidents.
Not sure if I’m being unreasonable about expecting a certain level of care, but just to give you an idea, here are some incidents I’d encountered during the course of treatment with them (ABC Clinic on Harley Street):
- Once, the clinic managed to mix me up with another patient and unwittingly gave me details about the other patient’s embryos that I shouldn’t be hearing. It was the day before my FET and they’d called me to confirm the time I should arrive. Minutes later, they called again to say “just to clarify, we’ll be transferring one of the embryos that wasn’t tested”. To which I could only say, “Are you sure you’re not confusing my embryos with another patient’s? Because I had never paid for any of my embryos to be tested so there shouldn’t be a mix of embryos that were tested and untested.” The staff started to protest that couldn’t be possible but interrupted herself and then apologised because apparently she did mix me up with another patient... I can only hope they didn’t put the wrong embryo in me during the procedure LOL
- When I was vomiting a lot in the first trimester (couldn’t keep any food or liquids down at one point) I wondered if I had hyperemesis gravidarum and should check head to A&E but didn’t want to make a fuss if it turns out it’s just pretty normal to be vomiting 4-5 times a day and feeling constant nausea. So I called the IVF clinic to get their view (since they obviously have far more experience handling pregnant women than I do). It was the head nurse who called me back but surprisingly, she took a really impatient tone from the start and just sounded like she was far too busy to talk to me. I was barely 10 seconds into describing the symptoms I was having before she interrupted and said “look if you’re that worried you should just go to A&E”. (Easier said than done, if you’re in such a nauseous/weakened state you can barely stand, never mind get on a train to the hospital) She came across as really dismissive, as if she couldn’t care less. Don’t know if I’d caught her at a bad time (but then again, she was the one who called me so surely she had a spot of time?) The conversation became really harsh and later she must’ve felt bad enough about the way she’d handled it as she called me back again, this time with a much more professional demeanour. But it was so distressing going through that first call - esp. in my nauseous/worried state of mind - I was left wondering why we were paying thousands to a clinic to “not care”. The lack of sympathy/attempt to help was shocking. I thought we were in their care until we were discharged and passed on to the NHS but clearly that was not the level of care provided.
- The final straw was this: during my last appointment/scan with them, the nurse had me lie down on the examination table as always. Usually, during these appointments the nurse would lock the door so no one can enter. So I was on the table with my legs spread open, my vagina pointing somewhat at the door (because that’s how they’d positioned the table). Before the nurse could come over to do the scan, the door suddenly opened and someone barged in. I of course got the shock of my life because no one was supposed to be able to enter. Turns out it was a female doctor but all I could think of was “I think I just exposed myself to a stranger” (and that directly behind her was the clinic’s public corridor so anyone could have looked in if they were passing by and we would all have gotten a fright in our own ways. Later the doctor was very apologetic about it but frankly that incident was completely avoidable had the nurse had done her job of locking the door... or if the doctor had followed protocol of knocking before entering. As it was, since neither of them did their jobs, the doctor and I ended up in an incident neither of us wanted to be part of.
These are just the highlights - there’ve been more incidents involving really messy administrative errors and even one time when they were caught outright lying to me (they claimed I needed a medicated FET instead of a natural FET because of some details of my failed fresh transfer, but when pressed for specifics they were unable to back up their claims. After doing my own research I told them I would prefer a natural FET unless they can explain in detail why they wanted a medicated FET - they stopped putting up a fight and we went natural FET, which gave me a BFP (now 8 weeks along).
Before my partner and I signed up to this clinic, I had read several posts on this forum about other patients feeling that the clinic was at times chaotic and that the staff sometimes seemed really busy/harried. I just hadn’t expected it to be this bad, with patient mix ups and unprofessional staff who talked down to their patients when they were clearly in need of guidance.
So all this brings me to my current question: I no longer have much faith in ABC and would really prefer to transfer my remaining embryos to another clinic (have one in mind already). Has anyone done such a transfer, and is there anything I should be mindful of for that process? If you’ve done this and have a rough indication of transfer cost at your clinic, that would be really helpful as well. Thanks in advance for any insights!