|
|
Useful websites for infertile patients include the following: Fertile thoughts at www.fertilethoughts.net is a comprehensive site, which has information on infertility, adoption and surrogacy. You can also post your own story online in the Personal Histories section and read about other patient's experiences as well! There are many bulletin boards and chat rooms as well, so you can network with other couples.
FertilityCommunity.com is an excellent starting point, for infertile couples that would like to explore the Internet. It provides reviews of selected valuable sites, thus offering you a guided tour of the net so that you don't get lost! Fertility Coach offers very useful coping techniques for infertile couples, and shows them how coaching can be used to help themselves through this difficult time in their life. The International Council on Infertility Information Dissemination at www.inciid.org is rich with valuable information; www.ferti.net, provides an international directory of infertility clinics; www.ivf.com has a lot of practical information for infertile patients; while the Resolve website has excellent information on advocacy for infertile couples.
Remember that you can also use the Internet to order products to enhance your chances of conceiving. This is especially helpful, because of many of these products are still not available in India. Thus, you can order fertility testers and ovulation monitoring kits from Conceiving Concepts, books on infertility from www.amazon.com, and even software to help you to chart, analyze and predict your fertility cycles from www.cyclewatch.com!
It is important to think about how much information you need from the Net to make yourself comfortable with your diagnosis and treatment options. Some people need as much information as they can possibly gather, while others find less information, or information with a specific focus, is best for them.
A warning - do not accept the contents of any single website as definitive. It is in the nature of medical research that many studies contain errors, many conclusions are false, and many reports flawed. This is why you need your doctor's help to make sense of your information search, because he can best explain to you how the information you have unearthed applies to you as an individual. You need to form a partnership with your doctor but it should be a partnership of well-informed equals, for which you need to do your homework first! Remember that the information you retrieve on the Net is simply a tool to help you to get better medical care - it should help to improve the communication between you and your doctor - not replace it!
© Dr. Aniruddha Malpani and Dr. Anjali Malpani www.drmalpani.com
Credits: How to Have a Baby: Overcoming Infertility
