How To Be A Successful Fertility Patient

"The book that talks about infertility treatment from the patient's point of view."

Infertility is a problem that affects one in six American couples. It's not only a common problem, it's also a very expensive problem, and for the doctors who specialize in treatment—a highly profitable problem.

Couples spend two billion dollars a year on infertility treatments. But only about half of those couples who seek treatment will end up having a baby. Of the couples who spend an average of $8000 per treatment for in vitro fertilization (test tube babies), only about one in eight will end up having a baby. Despite these discouraging figures, fertility doctors continue to appear on the news, and on talk shows, and in magazine articles, extolling new techniques and making it sound as if fertility treatment is highly effective, quick, and easy for any couple who wants to have a baby.

It isn't so. How to Be a Successful Fertility Patient is the first book to tackle head-on the very real difficulties that infertile couples face in treatment: the phenomenal expense of it (all too often excluded from standard health insurance policies); the poor success rates of many clinics; the physical rigors involved; and the toll on the couple's relationship. Author Peggy Robin, herself a two-time successful fertility patient, has drawn together all the information patients need to be wise consumers and make the often difficult choices they face about medical intervention in their reproductive lives. This is the first book by a patient for other patients to guide couples through the increasingly convoluted maze that is infertility treatment today.

Though there are many books by doctors on the subject, they're all alike. They're all written on the assumption that the doctor knows what's best. They describe the types of diagnostic tests and treatments in current use, usually in medical jargon the patient finds difficult to follow. As medical technologies change quickly, these books soon become obsolete.

How to Be a Successful Fertility Patient is different. It does more than just describe the physical facts about treatment. It is the only fertility guide that tells what tests and procedures feel like from the patient's point of view. It's the only book that explores the hot controversies in the fertility field, telling, for example, both sides of the endometriosis story (some doctors believe that this disorder of the uterine lining is a major cause of infertility in women and should always be treated with the most aggressive means—surgery—while others just as strongly believe that there is no direct relationship between endometriosis and infertility, and that unless the endometriosis is painful, it's best left alone). Peggy Robin has premised her book on the idea that the more the patient knows about her problem, the better able she will be to make the decision that is right for her body, her partner, her lifestyle.

How to Be a Successful Fertility Patient is based on over a hundred interviews with current and former fertility patients. In plain, non-medical English Peggy Robin answers the questions couples really need to know:

· How do you know if you are infertile and need treatment?

· How can you make sure your medical insurance will cover your treatment?

· How to shop for the best doctor or clinic where you live.

· How to recognize a quack when you see one.

· Tests—which ones are necessary, which ones can you do without?

· What do you do if after several months of treatment, you still haven't conceived?

· How to cope with the stress that infertility brings to couple's lives.

· Should you keep your infertility a secret or talk about it openly with family and friends?

How to Be a Successful Fertility Patient features a unique questionnaire designed to help couples discover what level of treatment—conservative, moderate, or aggressive—would best suit their individualized case. Many useful tips and warnings are presented in easy-to-find boxes. Valuable consumer information such as ratings of over-the-counter ovulation test kits comes in the form of easy-to-read tables.

Special sections of the book treat some thorny subjects that are often glossed over by doctors. What about the infertile couple with qualms about the ethical nature of certain forms of fertility treatment? Robin lays out both sides of the argument about surrogate motherhood, use of donor eggs or sperm, host uterus, and other techniques, so that the patient can reach the conclusion that jibes with her own individual conscience. She is also the only fertility writer to focus specially on the needs of non-traditional patients. A chapter is devoted to the treatment options available to single women, single men, unmarried heterosexual couples, gay male couples, lesbian couples, and couples whose religion places restrictions on medical intervention.

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Peggy Robin is the author of several books including Saving the Neighborhood (Woodbine House) and Outwitting Toddlers (Lowell House). Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and two daughters.

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