You made some good points.
I'm definitely not saying that the others shouldn't be treated too, but rather that we're being treated unfairly as infertiles. Which you already know.
What really got to me about the terminal cancer patients was that I always ended up having to have these end of life care discussions with them and their families in critical situations, when their oncologists or primary care doctors (who know them well and ought to have a good relationship with them) really should have addressed how far to go with advanced life support with them in a non-urgent situation during a clinic visit. It was really rough for me to watch the families have to make decisions for their loved one (who wasn't capable of expressing their own wishes at that time), and then watch the patient potentially suffer for a period of time in the ICU before the end came.
And what we really need for those super-long-term patients with no hope of independent life is some sort of lower intensity non-ICU setting where they could be in chronic care. It was always so awful when some trauma or neurosurgical patient with a life-threatening but likely survivable injury (who could get back to their baseline healthy condition) would have to be transferred to another city or even the US by air ambulance because we had no ICU beds available. In fact, one of the neurosurgeons at the hospital I'm currently at said that OHIP pays exorbitant amounts of money each year to have neurosurgical patients transferred to the US for care, when there's no bed available in Ontario. And when all they'd need to do is fund 1-2 more neurosurgical ICU beds to be able to treat those patients closer to home and in Canada, where the care would be far less expensive.
But OHIP should ALSO cover treatment for those of us suffering from infertility, because it's a treatable medical condition. And the treatments have been proven to work with reasonably good success rates.
But I'm preaching to the converted, so it's time to go study!
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I agree. I think part of the sticking point re: funding is that there's no clear definition of infertility - it's a grey area. Is it a social condition? Is it a medical condition? Is it something else? Is it a combination of more than one thing?
I see it as both a medical and a social issue. People's bodies have something wrong with them, ergo no babies, and so I think they usually deserve to have assistance under our socialized medical system.
And this is beside the fact that, in the long run, funding IVF would save OHIP money...
But I'm also preaching to the converted. *Sigh* I do want to become an IF advocate.
Thanks so much for the congrats. I'm sending you vibes, prayers, the dreaded baby dust, anything that might work!
Kate, I do understand and just wanted to add my "two-cents" worth about other medical issues.
We'll fight together to get coverage for everyone. We/you may not benefit from any OHIP changes (you will get pregnant before), but others will -- in the future.
OHW will leave behind her baby dust for you and I'll catch some later.
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