Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Fertility Fun in the SL!

Sunday brian and I drove to St. Louis Missouri for our day of fertility appointments. It's only a 4.5 hour drive from Memphis, boring drive, but completely do-able! brian finally caved and bought an ipad on Friday knowing we will be doing lots of traveling- especially retrieval-transfer time. He was able to work the whole way there which is great! It's all about billable hours-haha! Now if I could just pry the ipad from his hands to be able to use it!!!




We enjoyed the hotel as it was raining and dreary outside and then went over to the mall. I was disappointed that we missed the grand opening of Nordstrom by just a few days! Sunday night we went to the lobby bar for a drink before dinner and they had tango lessons going on which was definitely some amazing people watching! Then we had dinner at a wonderful restaurant called Harvest. They use all organic, fresh local ingredients. They had a scallop corn dog- wierd I know but it actually worked. My sis in law and her boyfriend came out to meet us since they were still in town from a wedding in the are the night before. We had a great night.

We started the day off Monday with a phone consult with dr. Rink Murray in Chattanooga, TN- which is 5 hours from memphis. he set the bar EXTREMELY high for our other appointments. We talked to him for 1.5 hours and he had so many great ideas and wonderful insight, next steps, etc. I loved everything he had to say and he had the best personality. We also appreciated how he broke everything down into terms we could truly understand. I LOVE that he does all of the testing and is super involved in the process. The only thing he does not do himself is the bloodwork. I did not even see my doctor one time until retrieval day. Nor did my doctor do either of my IUI's. he has already followed up letting us know he typed everything up from our appointment. Talk about being on top of things!!!! And I love that he has more of a "boutique" practice. I definitely wouldn't just be a number here. My feeling that I had before this appointment was that this would be my favorite, and so far he is the front runner!


The second appointment we had was with dr. Sherman Silber. He was a nice man and has a crazy amount of experience. We started this appointment off in the hospital with an ultrasound. i had 29 follicles which we were happy with. But he proposed the mini-ivf, which only makes 3-4 eggs, then he freezes them for 3 months before transfer. I want to MAKE more eggs because I will be 35 next year- the clock is ticking. We also don't want to wait 3 months for a transfer. All of the tests are done in the hospital which is intimidating to me. I also didn't love that I felt like I had stepped into 1980 in the office. Nothing was new or updated- there were tons of VHS tapes everywhere. Then we were shuffled into a non- friendly room with an administrator wanting us to secure our date with 500.00. I think this man is incredibly talented, but this is just not for us.


Our last appointment was at 3 PM with Dr. Peter Ahlering. he is with the SHER Institute. We really liked him alot. he met with us for about 2 hours and had some really good ideas. They are big on it all being about the sperm and egg and not all being created equal. They have an incredible lab and a microscope they use for sperm selection. I never really thought about some sperm being better than others, but with this technology they can "hand select" the best ones to ICSI the egg. You could have a perfect egg, but if the sperm isn't right, it won't work. he does not think I have an egg quality issue. He thinks I was under stimulated with the wrong protocol. He also does all of the tests minus the bloodwork himself.

Speaking of protocol- not one person really likes the antagonist protocol that we used for IVF. No matter what dr we pick, we will not be doing this same protocol.

next up is CCRM in Colorado with Dr. Schoolcraft. I have decided I would prefer to be within driving distance. But I will be anxious to hear what he has to say and how he would proceed with next steps-treatment plans.

We are so glad that we did this yesterday as everyone had different insight and ideas. We are ready to proceed with another cycle soon. Now we just have some big decisions to make! :) We are feeling extremely positive and learned alot from our first IVF experience.

4 comments:

  1. Sounds like you have a lot of choices. I wouldn't want to wait 3 months for the transfer either! Yay for the iPad. I'm totally addicted to mine. GL :)

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  2. I'm so happy to hear that you had a good day! I can't wait to see how your story continues to unfold! I'm still praying for you!

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  3. Wow! It sounds like you received incredible information. The fact that you're smiling outside the offices shows what a strong person you are. Even if you didn't feel like it on the inside, you're putting on a strong face for others & that rubs off on those around you. :)

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  4. Wow, it sounds like they were all very thorough and informative. I'm still so impressed that you're doing this!

    My suggestion is to go with your gut feeling..it's usually right :)

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