In my 16 months of heartache I have lost much more than my happy self. I have lost some dear friends and written off most of my family. I have lost respect for the medical profession, psychologists and attorneys.
Friends Forever
Friends are supposed to be there for you – especially if you have been the one to always be there. Most quietly disappeared as soon as the bad news spread. Others hung around hoping you wouldn’t notice them. (Unfortunately I did and called them out.)
Unfortunately there was also one of my closest friends that was unlucky enough to fall pregnant right as I got my bad news. I still miss having her around.
My Dear Family
You can’t choose family… You can’t choose the tragedies in your life either. I expected to at least get a Facebook message from at least one of my more than 24 cousins or 14 aunts/uncles. Yet not 1 to this day have had the decency to contact me at all.
Now I have 3 cousins, a sister, mother and father. That is it. The rest of my family doesn’t exist anymore.
Legal Costs
We used an attorney for our surrogacy application to the high court. The fee was R30,000. Do I feel it should cost that much? NO. You can do your homework on how much different attorneys charge for a legal service like this.
The Health Crew
For years I complained about my pains, aches and extremely disgustingly heavy monthlies that make me anemic. I complained that the pill didn’t work. I visited gynaecologist after gynaecologist, but I would be in and out in 15 mins with yet another useless prescription of another pill and a big bill.
Then I went to a fertility clinic and paid a load of cash to hear that actually, you know what – you were right…there is something wrong with you. It is even as serious as you thought it was. I had endometrioses and adenomyoses – stage 4. It is so severe that removing it to have a useful womb would be impossible.
If only one useless gynaecologist took the time to listen to me and use braincells instead of watching the clock and counting money I would not be in this situation. I would’ve been diagnosed sooner. I might have had a chance.
Then to complete my surrogacy application I had to go for psychological evaluations. These psychologists “only” charge around R3000 for an hour and a report. This report is once again a template. The report we got back from our psychologist was a joke with spelling mistakes and inaccuracies (that might have been part of someone else’s report).
Read my next post for the journey up to now – from diagnoses, research and surrogacy plans.
