be heard-join an IVF study

Yesterday, I had the very enjoyable change to participate in a non-medical IVF study thanks to a posting I saw on LFCA that is open to those about to go thru IVF or who have gone thru IVF in the past five years. This study is being conducted by Jody Madeira from Indiana University. It involves a one hour (ok, mine was two because I'm long winded have a lot of words kinda lonely talk too much thorough) phone interview with a very kind, empathetic, personable person. Basically, she is looking at the topic of informed consent and decision making experience. It really was kind of nice to be discussing parts of my journey beyond just the numbers of eggs retrieved (or not) and the BFN's with someone who was actually interested (versus couldn't care but got stuck listening to me or just morbidly curious because of my freak show past). I got to talk about my experience which gave my battle a bit of purpose and discuss some of my clinical experiences so that hopefully someone can learn from them and improve upon them someday. It was a very positive two hours and I would encourage you to participate if you will be or are an IVF veteran because I know all of you have some very valuable experiences that could add depth to her study...plus, I like to support studies that will be beneficial to anyone else in the IF community.

You can email Jody Madeira directly at jmadeira@indiana.edu . There is an ama.zon gift card available for those that complete the interview and your responses are anonymous and confidential.

Note: If you decide to participate and you mail in your consent and then hear nothing--follow up! She never got mine (it's probably lost in the bowels of the typical university mail system), but I thought I just wasn't "picked" (like my IVF journey that I told her a little about in the email was too much of a train wreck for her to even want to deal with). Wrong--she is not random sampling for those that respond--she is interviewing whomever responds and is eligible. So, follow up with her (luckily, she followed up with me when my consent was never received.).