Insightful

The IVF lottery of joy and sorrow

This article from The Age on the weekend was well worth reading.   It tells the story of the poor success rate of IVF for over 40 year old women, yet the fact that it occasionally works on women even over 45 means that it keeps being tried:

In the assisted reproduction business, those who get older women pregnant achieve holy grail status. Which means there is great pressure on them to put over-40s women through as many cycles as possible to get the success rates up.

As it stands there is no limit to how many IVF cycles a woman can undergo in Australia, and hence no shortage of doctors willing to perform the procedure.

Yet what has really bothered me is that, as with so many of my girlfriends on IVF, no one seemed to be monitoring Louisa's mental health. And Blind Freddy could see she was not well in that department. At all.

''Counselling? What use was that?'' Louisa told me. ''I wasn't going to tell them anything was wrong in case they rejected me for treatment. I wasn't going to admit I cry all day, every day. Of course I was depressed. I wanted a baby and couldn't have one. I was there for them to give me hope, not point out the obvious.''

I realise that doctors must feel in a bit of bind in that they can't advise the patient that there is no hope whatsoever, and if it works it's the "cure" (I suppose) to their depression; but on the other hand, the reality is that the for great majority of patients above a certain age, it is only going to protract the disappointment and delay the process of getting over the inevitable accommodation to not being able to have your own baby.