Embryo Hostage Crisis

During this entire process of using donor embryo's I have tried my hardest not to bad mouth the company that we got these embryos from. I can no longer bite my tongue. 

So let's talk about the bad/ugly side of donor embryo.  First,  there are many different companies that you can use.  When I first read the catch of the company we went with, I thought.... Oh hell to the no!  Then I looked at other organizations. Each of them has their own catch.  For some you need a home study... for embryos.   For some, you have to travel to them to get an embryo transfer.  For some you get an embryo from the same biological parents and so does 10 other people.  If you want a second child (God willing) you start this process over again with a whole new set of DNA.  Suddenly, this first place was sounding better and better.  It's not that there is anything wrong with having many childen with differrent DNA, but if given the choice, I would prefer that I had the option to do that.  Of course, I am painfully aware that this may not work out at all. 

They request that photo's of your children be sent to them a few times a year.  I dont like that.  The whole time I have been working with this woman, I'd ask her a series of questions in an email and get a response email: Yes.  WTF do you mean Yes? I asked you like 10 questions, what are you answering?  It all seemed to be so rediculous.  Each communication worse than the one before.  I never got a warm and fuzzy feeling about this.  However, given the fact that I am essentially buying embryos online... does one ever get a warm and fuzzy feeling about this?  This entire process has been one thing after another.  By the end of this process, I wanted to scream at this woman!  However, since she's holding our embryo's as ransome, I have to shut my mouth. 

Since this entire process is so insane, there is a certain level of knowledge that you come to expect from this company/person.  Suddenly you realize... holy shit, I dont think this person has the foggiest idea of what is going on here.  It was all worth it because we are getting what we need, so we have continued to tell each other to suck it up, just deal with it, and when this is finished, we can look back and laugh. 

Then comes the time to ship these embryos.  It's a nightmare.  Well, first, this woman gives me the address to ship the cryo tank to... IT'S A FUCKING PO BOX. You can not ship a cryo tank to a po box.  I'm not even in the embryo industry, and I know this.   After talking with the shipping company, I began working with this guy who offered to help me out.  He stated that he will take care of this.  I explained to him... When you talk to this woman, first, she's an idiot... do not listen to anything she tells you.  It must be verified with the donor clinic.  I explained that you would explect that someone in this business would understand what is going on.  However, this is not the case.  Once you talk to her, you will see what I mean.  He called me later that day to tell me that he agree's with me 100%, that she is clueless.  He told me not to panic, that he will follow up with the donor clinic and ensure everything is handled properly.  He has been a huge help. 

Later, I got the news that they can not ship the embryo's until a release form is signed off with the donor clinic.  So, do you mean to tell me that I spent all of this money on embryos that have not been released yet?  Yes, that's exactly what happened.  So for the past few months where we thought we have these embryos... we do, in fact not have legal rights to them.  What if these people were to get into an accident?  We would be left in the lurches until this could be settled, in court.  Hopefully that is not the case, but in the meantime, we just sit here and wait until this gets figured out. 

This morning, she wrote me an email that she was following up with the donors.  She told me that most people go to their clinic on the weekend to get their forms notarized.  Now anyone who has ever been to an RE clinic knows good an well that people do not go to the clinic over the weekend for forms to be filled out.  She is rediculous.  I think she thinks she can stall me with these rediculous statements.  I informed her that not only do I doubt that this form gets signed at the RE on the weekends, that in this particular case, I know this is not true. These embryos are coming from a state that is far away from the state that the donors live in currently.  She is full of it!  I can't take much more of the crap. 

Nothing is easy. Up until I found myself constantly grabbing the short straws, I never realized how cruel the world really is.  Now the phrase, "dog eat dog world" has never been more true.  Seems like it is just a vicious cycle of people taking advantage of people in not so great situations.  Everywhere you turn, there's someone waiting to stick it to you.  Oh, and you can't really be pissy about it because they have your future held hostage. 

In the meantime, my leave was extended until August 30th.  I think by then I'll be itching to get back to work.  For right now, I've been pretty busy fighting fires.  I hope this comes to a close soon.