John James boots out IVF

The other issue is choice of hospital in the ACT and range of services. Should a religious group be in charge of 75% of ACT healthcare?
And now that they are, shouldn’t the one govt run hospital be picking up the slack and offerring these services. But the ACT surgery waiting lists are in such dire straits that the last thing they want is extra work, so they are doing nothing.

Maybe my post above does not make sense, and to add some clarification…..

Our near 2yo girl was conceived natually, and so too for our almost-born baby, due in a few weeks.

Our contingency of the 3 IVF eggs didn’t need to be used. It’s another story altogether if you ask us what we will do with those frozen embryos – to be honest, we don’t know.

But the issue we faced is real life – my wife’s cancer and her potential infertility with radiation treatment.

Something that the catholic church couldn’t care about. It’s their doctrine, and if that’s what they believe in, then bully to them.

But the world has moved on, and so should that church. No wonder they are losing so many parishioners.

This post achieves nothing more than me whinging about them 🙂

IVF is not just about babies for the infertile.

A few years back, my wife at the age of 30 was operated on for bowel cancer. She’s lost ha;f her bowel. Bowelk caner is pretty much unheard of at that age.

As part of the followup procedures is radiation therapy, which would render her sterile. It’s used in conjunction with chemo.

We had no children then (I have an older daughter from a previous marriage), so we underwent a round of IVF to allow some fertilised eggs to be frozen. We have 3 wriggler eggs on ice.

We ended up not going with radiotherapy, for other reasons, and we have one healthy 2yo girl and another to be born in about 5 or 6 weeks time.

So IVF is also in place for other scenarios of which some people don’t understand.

All of which the catholic church could not give a shit about, which makes me ashamed to admit to my traditional upbringing…

IVF requires surgery under general anaesthetic, which was all done at John James. 400 people a year according to the Canberra Times. The IVF companies can set up consulting rooms wherever they like, but they can’t just set up an operating theatre. IVF is not offered at any other ACT hospitals. Now that the Catholic group the Little Company of Mary own most of the ACT hospitals they have chosen not to allow IVF doctors access to the operating theatre. This is their right, but they could have handled the transition a little better. IVF is quite stressful, and the preparation for the operation takes months and months. To go through all that and then be told it is cancelled would be awful.
And as usual in this situation, the ACT government is all sympathetic talk but not doing anything. They could be offering access to the Canberra Hospital surgery, but instead they are mouthing platitudes. This is just another example of the services that are falling apart in Canberra at the moment.

OK, you got me, I was trolling…….sorry. I have no idea where any IVF services are in Canberra.

Mind you isnt it the impramateur of any privately owned company to run their business the way they like?

“Also the high cost of IVF is elitist and unjustified. Shall I go on?” Try explaining that rationale to someone who is desperate to have kids and is on IVF. I’m guessing that anyone who is willing to go that far to have a child is the sort of parent we want in society, not some fertile bogan looking for a free plasma from the baby bonus. Don’t believe me, take a wander down to Harvey Norman on a Saturday arvo and see the barely post pubescents in their 1990 Commodores rock up with their prams and check out the latest from LG.

There is ample opportunity and unlimited funds for the existing doctors of the JJMH Fertility Clinic to set up their own private clinic if they so desired.
But they would have to spend the money themselves instead of bludging off a private hospital, and they’re obviously too tight to do so.
It’s not Calvary’s issue, they have always been a non sterilisation, non termination, non IVF zone- no surprises there, and if they hadn’t bought JJMH it would have gone down the financial gurgler real soon anyway, so still no IVF Clinic.
Anyway, my point is that although IVF offers some lucky people healthy progeny, there are even more who haven’t, and many women have become critically ill and died following artificial fertilisation procedures. Then its tup to the public hospitals to try and fix their problems anyway. More should be made of the high levels of risks to women undertaking IVF but I fear the public aren’t fully aware of. Also the high cost of IVF is elitist and unjustified. Shall I go on?

Hmmm….A coupla years back when I was there every day I seem to remember a Sydney IVF (that being the company name) office in the John James Medical Centre (located right next to JJ Hospital, but a seperate establishment). Not sure if they have the facilities to actually, er… ‘do the business’ or if it was just for examinations/bookings etc. I can’t see any real reason for the Canberra IVF clinic to simply shut because of this. There’s something like 10 seperate medical centres in the Deakin area, there’s bound to be space in one of them.

Don’t personally know if there’s IVF at Calvary or not – but the story on ABC radio yesterday morning implied that with the closure of the JJH facilities people would be forced to travel to Sydney for the procedures – so I guess there’s an implication that its not available at Calvary.

With no IVF clinic in town, I wonder how long before someone comes up with a DIY option?

maybe they are trying to self-counter their own ridiculous ideals on contraception??

Got to love the privatisation of hospitals, particularly when privatisation permits ideals such religion to effect the types of services available.

One would wonder if they would take it a step further and permit ‘the practice of medicine’ onto only those patients who hold the same beliefs ?