Infertility

So we were ready to start again and we started looking into abroad because of the availability of donors and also the success rates, and it became really quite exciting when we started to read that with dual donor in Spain was 65% of success. We could actually have lots in our favour for once and there could be more chance of it working than not working. It was fantastic, an unbelievable scenario. It’s scary and people talk about overseas as if it’s one place, you know, it’s bad overseas it’s not regulated but where precisely are we talking because it’s not one place. And that a point that I would immediately keep making, because ‘overseas’ isn’t this deregulated nightmare that people sometimes paint the picture of.

But there are a lot of people that very naïve about overseas treatment. They think it’s going to be a dingy back room down some side street, and somewhere that doesn’t speak any English. That’s fair I think our expectation wasn’t far off that when we started. But you, talking to people, and we went and viewed in our case, but it’s learning about it. Once you are not naïve and ignorant, you have learnt about it, you can make a judgement. And, you know, I would like to help as many people as possible, who might be considering it, but have shut that door because of their preconception of what it is and actually show them that it isn’t like that. But every country is different. You know, we have got people who have gone to Russia, the Ukraine, their experiences are very different. Not necessarily negative, just very different to, but they had reasons to go to those countries. Sometimes it’s to do with the ethnicity of their background is Eastern European origin then you might be more inclined to go to an Eastern European country. If you’re an India person then probably India’s a good place to go. And it’s important that you speak to people who have been, and do your research and understand, and if you can get there in advance and check the place out, that is not always possible, the further afield it is, but certainly learn as much as you can, because you, if you don’t talk to people about it, then you really make pre, pre, you know, judgements. And I think you’ll be surprised by what is out there. You’ll come home and be shocked by what we do here when you see how it’s done in other countries. 

He was very interested you now to listen to... what I, you know my story. And... also quite sad I think that... and he actually got, went into a great deal of depth, you know, about the way they operate their egg donation programme. It is about the largest egg donation programme in the world and explained also the cultural attitude towards donation, egg donation. Well not just egg donation, organ donation in Spain, they have a very different cultural attitude that is very much more favourable to donating in general and they have no shortage of egg donors. And he, you know, explained some of the reasons for that, which was very interesting and also he got his team to together there to discuss my case and my notes before I went in order to seek their opinion beforehand, because normally they wouldn’t treat someone over 50, but they, because of my history, they said that they would make an exception and when you did, they actually do the examination in the office. So he had all the equipment there and I, when it is the actual person the top person if you like actually doing the investigations as well as you now deciding on the treatment and doing the treatment itself, you have got the continuity there and he knew exactly what he was looking for. You know he was interested. He actually identified adenomyosis in the uterus and I had always been told that they were fibroids and... he then sort of went into great depth about adenomyosis and infertility. So I had already looked at that a bit and now of course I have looked into that side of things in greater depth as well and very involved you know with adenomysis. So and you now he discussed the implications of that. And I was just amazed you know, that he was able to established that on an ultrasound. So, and I just thought well things are obviously considerably more advanced [laugh] in some places, you know where they can assess the state of the uterus and what is happening in the pelvis. You know look at the person’s history and then make a judgement you know, and tell the patient, you know, what the chances are. So... but whether he was more open with me because he knew I knew a lot about it. I mean that, that is a possibility. Whether he would have gone into that much detail with somebody that was not so well informed is hard to say. But I just thought that having that amount of information at their finger tips really from so many centres, because they, actually they combine the results in their programmes from several centres. So it is not just one centre working in isolation. It gives a huge advantage. So… the actual facilities were just absolutely amazing and the cost is a fraction, you know of what it is here. And I was thinking well how can they, how can they provide that. And why can’t we. You know?