The start of a journey

I’ve never blogged before, but I have a unique perspective on fertility problems, so I thought I would try.  I have suffered through infertility, and I am a fertility doctor. I’ve seen both sides.

My own infertility treatment journey started one Saturday morning, in the office where I was doing my fellowship.  We had just finished with the morning clinic: seeing patients, doing inseminations, and making medication decisions.  I had finally worked up the nerve to ask for help.  My husband and I had been trying to conceive for a year and a half.  I knew all about how it was supposed to work.  We’d been tracking ovulation, spending hundreds of dollars on ovulation and home pregnancy tests.  We’d tried having intercourse every other day (like I knew we were supposed to), every day (ouch!), and every third day.  I was frustrated, scared, and just plain angry.  My body had betrayed me.  I had wanted children for as long as I could remember.  I had waited through medical school and residency (too stressful and time-consuming, not fair to a child).  Now was the time…and it wasn’t working!

I found my attending doctor in front of the coffee machine.  “Can I talk to you about something?”,  I asked.  I explained what was going on.  I must have looked like a deer in the headlights, but he was kind and sympathetic.  I have learned a lot on how to be a doctor from him.  He never talked down to or over the head of a patient.  He managed to explain complex concepts without using medical jargon and always made sure the patient understood everything that was going on.  He never rushed a patient (which sometimes made his office hours very late), and he loved job.  Everything I wanted in a doctor and everything I wanted to be in a doctor.

My new doctor ordered a whole bunch of tests and reassured me that he would do his best to give me the child I always wanted.  I went home with a smile.  I now had some hope.  Maybe it would turn out to be something simple to fix.  Even if it wasn’t, at least I was doing something. I had a great doctor on my side.  Things were looking up.