shady grove is driving me nuts

[Anonymous]

Hi 14:14 here again....

I found a few of my drug protocol sheets from SGF that I can share with you...

For MDL Protocols - It looks like for two of my cycles I did 20 units of MDL every 12 hours and then did Follistim in the morning and evening and then Menopur in the evening only. I was a poor responder so my doses were usually set high. I did 375 of Follistim total and 150 of Menopur although it wasn't uncommon for me to go up to as high as 600 Follistim or 225 Menopur.

For Low Dose HCG Protocols - It looks like I started with the MDL again and then added in 50 units of Low Dose HCG in the evening at the same time that I started the Follistim (which was 450 total daily). It looks like we didn't use Menopur with the Low Dose HCG protocol. I believe the reason we went with the Low Dose HCG protocol is we kept having a problem with low maturity of my eggs - it worked great one cycle and resulted in a pregnancy but then we had the same immature egg problem using the same protocol on a different cycle.

I can't be 100% certain but I believe Menopur and Repronex are more or less the same drug - similar to Follistim and Gonal F. I know I had cycles where I used Menopur and others where I used Repronex and I honestly can't remember why some cycles I used one and not the other. Good question though.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

Thanks! Appreciate you digging up your records. If you were a poor responder, did you have a dominate follicle problem or were you just slow to respond? I've had a dominate follicle problem, so am trying to figure out how to avoid that . . .

[Anonymous]

I had a dominant follicle problem on the Antagon protocol and was cancelled. Generally speaking, I had a problem with waking my ovaries up and getting them to produce enough big follicles and then getting them to be mature. For instance I think I went into retrieval once with an estrogen level of 3,600 and about 15 good size follicles (so you would think we'd get about 18 mature eggs if you figure each mature egg = 200 estrogen) but we ended up with 7 mature eggs. My estrogen never was a good indicator of how mature my follicles were - we ended up having to rely on the ultrasound and if the follicle wasn't over 18 - it never was mature.

I wish you all the best - it's a very frustrating process. Hang in there.

[Anonymous]

I worked with Shady Grove, and in my experience your primary nurse makes a HUGE difference. My Dr. and nurse were out of the Rockville office, but I did a lot of monitoring at the Annapolis office to avoid traffic to Rockville.

I started out doing IUIs (8 cycles, with one miscarriage) then did the Shared Risk program and got pregnant on the first IVF. I had a nurse in the beginning that I liked, but she "disappeared". I am not sure if she was fired or left abruptly, but it changed my experience with SG. I went through a cycle or 2 with no primary nurse, and it was beyond frustrating. Then I was assigned a new nurse, and she was my primary through the rest of my cycles. Even when I could not get directly to my doctor, she was always able to relay messages for me and was very responsive to phone messages and emails.

My suggestion would be that you ask for a new nurse if your nurse is unresponsive. I usually knew if my nurse would be out on vacation or even when she went away for the weekend. This way I knew to expect to talk to another nurse.

In reality, after over a year of treatments with them, I knew most of the nurses who worked with my doctor anyway.