A couple of questions about Shady Grove

[Anonymous]

I am planning on starting IVF soon for male factor only. I like the shared risk that Shady Grove offers, but feel a little hesitant. I have been trying to find an RE and the "I'm the doctor and I said so" attitude seems to be common. Is there any room to discuss the protocol with the doctor or is it just set and I need to deal with it?

Does anyone know if they are willing to switch out progesterone sup. for the progesterone injections?

Any recommendations of doctors? Annandale is the closest office to me.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

i used dr. greenhouse for 1 cycle and was successful luckily. i didn't ask for a lot of changes to the protocol, i liked what he had planned. as for the progesterone i did ask for the shots b/c i hated the suppositories and he said that he wanted to try the endometrin first and then we could reevaluate later. so i said ok, didn't argue...it worked so i don't know what the out come would have been had we switched to the shots.
i did feel that dr. greehouse was always available for questions - and still is even though i'm in my 3rd tri - very quick to respond on email) and always gives detailed answers. he seems patient to me...
hth

[Anonymous]

We went there for male factor also, although I am over 40. I guess it depends on the doctor that you get. My doctor isn't available by email and to ask any questions I have to go through the nurse. I had my ER & ET last month (done by whoever was on call in Rockville that day) and he never even called to discuss them. I haven't spoken to him since the ultrasound a couple of days before I triggered. I didn't expect a long chatty phone call, but I expected at least some tiny bit of communication after the procedures. I go in tomorrow for my blood test, which I am hoping will be OK (I've been getting + on HPTs, so I guess there's a good chance, but I'm afraid to get my hopes up too soon).

They do have high success rates and I didn't question the protocol I was on (this was my first IVF) so I don't know if they're amenable to changing it. I feel that my particular doctor would *not* have entertained the idea of changes, but perhaps that's not fair since I didn't ask for any. (He's not in Annandale, BTW.)

I feel that they are competent and there have been some individual nurses and doctors that I've met through my experience there that have acted like they cared, but I've not been happy with the overall experience of going through IVF there. I didn't think that IVF was going to be pleasant, but some of their actions made things more stressful and unpleasant than they could have been. I know some SG patients who have been able to find personalized, individual care there, and have felt like they were part of a "team" with their doctor/nurse, but I myself did not have that experience.

People on here always say that you rave about the people who got you pregnant. If my pregnancy is successful, I would still not rave about them. They will have gotten the job done, but at the expense of a lot of stress and bad feelings on my part.

[Anonymous]

I've gone thro 4 ivfs at shady grove. i agree with the previous posters--i did not have direct access to the dr.; i had to go thro the primary nurse, and when she was out, another nurse.
anyway, the dr. never called to discuss a failed cycle, etc. the only time she called me was before the transfer to discuss the no of embryos for transfer.
she was open to some suggestions (i wanted to do endometrin rather than pio shots), but she was not open to even discussing protocols tried by other REs and clinics.
i found her approach very cookie-cutter, which works if you're not a difficult case.
i don't even know if she was reviewing my case when i was being monitored on the weekends.
it's a very well-oiled machine.
the nurses i worked with were great and i have became great friends wth them.

[Anonymous]

SG doesn't tend to be flexible about protocols unless you've tried a number of them and things don't seem to be working. They aren't inflexible - they might let you be on birth control pills for 2 weeks or 4 rather than 3, or use progesterone shots vs. suppositories. But they don't change them much from patient to patient.

The reason why their success rates are among the highest in the region is that they pick their set protocols based on studies showing that they work well for a vast majority of patients. (Although they don't work for everyone - I'm a poor responder and the protocols sucked for me, but I'm not the average patient.) And one reason why their fees are lower than other clinics is because they use these set protocols rather than spend a lot of time working out different ones for different patients.

If you are only dealing with male factor, chances are high, but not 100%, that you'll stim well and create a lot of good eggs, and that the specific protocol that you'll use won't play much of a role in your success. Their protocols are based on large, controlled studies, and SG does tweak them fairly often so they are up-to-date, although not always cutting edge. However, you won't know until you try a cycle or two how well you'll do and how well the protocols work for you.

[Anonymous]

I was a patient at SG and did not have success there but I would still recommend it -- I just think that if you don't have success after a few cycles, you may have to look elsewhere (ie Cornell or CCRM). I'm puzzled that some patients felt they did not have direct access to their REs -- did you callt he front desk and ask to speak to your RE? Did they tell youthat you couldn't? 9I don't mean that as an attack, I'm just curious). I found that when I talked to my nurse, she usually answered by questions herself. But if I called and asked to talk to my RE, he would call me back. He also called to check in on me during each 2WW, but I realize that not all REs do that (although they should in my opinion). I did not try to push my RE to change my protocol, but he did change it for each cycle, to try to find what would work best for me. He also talked through his logic of what he chose so that I and DH felt like we understood waht was going on.

As for endometrin vs progesterone shots, I'd ask the RE why he's reluctant to do the shots. SG only switched to endometrin recently. However, I hit a nerve during one of my progesterone shots and now my left leg is numb and tingly and will be for months (lovely). Not sure how rare that is...

I was in the DC office, and I think that office or the Annandale office tend to have a friendly feel that the Rockville office. Byt he end of my thrid cycle not only did my RE and nurse know me well, but the front desk people knew me as well.

[Anonymous]

oh, and one of the receptionists at the annandale office is RUDE. hard to see her and deal with her attitude first thing in the morning.

[Anonymous]

for 09:57: I'm glad you had a better experience w/ SG. I do think it depends a lot on the dr. I'm 09:14 - yes, I called one time to ask for my RE and the receptionist said - "Who's your nurse? You'll need to speak to her first." No one ever told me I wasn't allowed to to call the RE, but it was made clear that the first point of contact was to be the nurse. And I have had not a single phone call during the 2WW from anyone except my nurse, who called to tell me I had no embryos to freeze.

[Anonymous]

I am a patient of Dr. Greenhouse. He works out of the Annandale and Fair Oaks offices. I did my monitoring at the Annandale office but my nurse was out of Fair Oaks, Doreen. I would recommend both of them very highly. Dr. Greenhouse does give you his e-mail address to contact him and he responds pretty quickly. I responded very well to the meds the 1st cycle and he adjusted my 2nd cycle accordingly. We had to cancel our 1st cycle because we had no sperm the day of our retrieval. But, 2nd cycle was successful and I am currently 7 weeks pregnant. Just saw the heartbeat this week! Dr. G called me during the cycles as well as during the 2ww. I didn't get a warm fuzzy feeling while going in for my monitoring appts. You see multiple nurses and Drs and front desk people. But, I felt that I always had access to the people handling my case Dr. G and Doreen for any and all questions. Good luck!!

[Anonymous]

Thanks a bunch, everyone!

[Anonymous]

I highly reccommend Dr. Greenhouse. He is compassionate and wonderful.. I have met other RE's in many SG offices..and I thought all of them were pretty good, but I like Dr. Greenhouse the best.. just my opinion!

[Anonymous]

I was happy with Shady Grove. It is a huge operation and I can't speak to the super-personalized experience- if that is what you are looking for, just make sure you talk to the RE to arrange that better. I did IVF at SG and had Dr. Anitha Nair for the monitoring, but Dr. Wiedra for the egg retrieval surgery. I worked with an AMAZING nurse who was my primary point of contact. I liked that SG was a big operation, because of the convenience- I went to the K St. office for the regular monitoring on the weekdays, and went to the Annandale/Fairfax office on weekends. I wasn't at all bothered to have the monitoring ultrasounds/bloodwork done by a different doctor on weekends, or to have the egg retrieval done by Dr. Wiedra, who happened to be on duty at the Rockville office (where all the egg retrieval is done- the other offices are just for monitoring mostly).

It was a good experience overall with SG, in spite of the generally rough experience of what I was going through. The whole IVF experience itself was pretty easy and really not a big deal.

[Anonymous]

We, too, had MF issues...started at Dominion with 4 natural cycle IVFs and were not successful (because they couldn't retrieve eggs), and then moved to Shady Grove with Dr. Greenhouse. We were considering Shady Grove's shared risk program, but have 50% coverage for IVF so discussed our options with Dr. G before we decided what to do. He felt that if we couldn't get pregnant within 2-3 tries, the odds would decrease after that. Long story short, SG doesn't give you the warm, fuzzy feeling (although they have some great lab techs and I liked my nurse well enough, and Dr. G is great), but they got the job done for us--we were successful on our first try and now we are 8 weeks pregnant with twins!

Best of luck to you.

[Anonymous]

PP: 21:10 here...I forgot to add that Dr. G advised us to not go into the shared risk program, because he thought that our case would be pretty straightforward and the insurance benefit was good enough for us to not go into the program. I'd ask any of your doctors what they though.

[Anonymous]

We are on our second round of IUI with Dr. Greenhouse. BFN on the first. I am in the dreaded TWW and haven't been able to sleep for the past four nights. I put a call into him and he called right back. He is an excellent doctor. And as the PP's have said, it's not super personal but they have good results and that's what we were looking at when we decided to go with them. Best of luck to you.