Recommend RE at GW
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Anonymous
| I suffer from endometriosis and am facing secondary infertility after a long struggle to conceive our first child. For a variety of reasons, I would like to take the next steps - including seeing an RE - at GW. Does anyone have a specific recommendation for which doctor to see for my initial consult? |
Anonymous
| Dr. Frankfurter. It will probably take a few extra weeks to get an appointment with him, but it's worth the wait over Dr. Lalwani. |
Anonymous
Thanks. That was what I was getting at, I think. I have a somewhat unique situation and would rather avoid IVF if at all possible, so I want someone who will take the time to try all other avenues. |
Anonymous
I'm curious why you think so. Dr. F is my doctor but Dr. L did my retrieval and transfer. I like her and thought she was great for these procedures, but I don't know how she is overall. I've met Dr. Humm for monitoring and thought she was very nice, but I haven't talked with her otherwise. |
Anonymous
| Dr. F. is great and very straightforward. We are working with him now on our first IVF next month. He was very blunt and said that no other procedure would work for our particular case and that IVF would be the only way we could get pregnant. I agree with the other commenter who said you will wait a long to see him - that is an understatement. Expect to wait 8 weeks for first appointment and 4 weeks between follow ups. It can be a bit frustrating, but I do think he's great. I can't comment on the other two doctors because I haven't met him, but I do know that Dr. F handpicked Dr. L for the practice, so I would trust her. |
Anonymous
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PP here- I thought Dr. Lalwani was very nice, as a person. No issues with bedside manner, etc.
However, I don't think she did a good job with evaluating all the information and laying out a clear plan. It took 8 months from our initial appointment to our first cycle (and I turned 40 during that time), and I think it could have been much faster. It seemed like we would take one step, then would have to schedule an appointment to get the next step. And then another test/procedure. And then another appointment. We couldn't even complete our first cycle (after 8 months of testing, etc), because I wasn't ovulating. Why didn't she figure this out somewhere in the previous 8 months??? Several of the procedures she performed felt like they were being done by a less-experienced med student- not horrible, just a little clumsy, "I can't find your ovary" on the US (the nurses doing the morning monitoring didn't have any trouble finding it...)- it didn't inspire confidence. The interactions I had with Dr.Frankfurter were much more informative and direct. I wish we had switched doctors. |
Anonymous
I've found this to be pretty infuriating. I can see having to wait a long time to get into the practice, but established patients should be able to get appointments much more quickly. When I call for a follow-up I've been told the first available is 2 months out, which is just unreasonable. |
Anonymous
| I didn't see Dr frankfurter and so I didn't have those waits. Four weeks for initial, follow up scheduled the day when 3day testing would be ready, ivf class, the maybe two weeks later the appt to confirm ivf would be the way to go. First appt in June and cycle started in September, which was delayed for some procedures their testing showed would be necessary. I saw Lalwani in the office visits, frankfurter for some testing, and dr humm was on call for retrieval and transfer. I think they make a lot of consensus decisions on protocols and I had positive experiences with all three. |
Anonymous
| I have Dr. F and know that it is hard to get his appointment. So, before I even have my egg retrieval, I proactively make appointment with educational guess (like 3~4 weeks post retrieval if possible. Otherwise, I'd have to wait quite a long time after 2WW to meet with Dr. F on time to move on to the next step. So, for the past unsuccessful cycle, I was able to meet with him only 5 days after 2WW. This time around (freeze all cycle), I was able to meet with him 4 weeks after retrieval (essentially abt 2 weeks after supposed 2WW). |
Anonymous
| Oh, I forgot to include for an initial appointment, I had to wait like everyone else to meet with Dr. F. But after my cycle started, I did what I described above to speed up the process. Fortunately or unfortunately, all these appointment that I made ahead of time never got canceled. (I could have canceled if BFP but that did not happen...) |
Anonymous
Yup - it is rough. I am not sure if Shady Grove would have been better (anyone on here have experience?) but I really trust him and when you DO get in to see him, he's excellent. Since everyone who is seeing him obviously wants to be pregnant ASAP, it can quite hard to swallow. |
Anonymous
| OP again. I have an appointment with Dr. Lalwani. Should I switch? |
Anonymous
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If you're staying local (and I think it makes sense to do so for an initial RE consult), I truly believe Dr. F is the best option. I switched to GW from another DC practice, and it was night-and-day in terms of getting a thorough analysis of my records and history along with a bottoms up approach to determining what's going on...instead of just, "Let's try this..."
I saw him 2012-13 (DD is a result of the first cycle I did with him, 5th overall)...so I can't speak to current wait times. But I can speak to its being well worth the wait to consult with him. He followed up on what seemed like insignificant symptoms...and one of those turned out to be a missed issue which he found (through additional testing) and then worked with others at GW to get corrected. |
Anonymous
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This is an older thread, so I'm hoping to gather some additional experiences out there with Dr. Lalwani and Dr. Humm. I have a consult scheduled with Dr. F for late October, but I will be 41 later this year and need to get going on this if it's going to happen at all. I don't have really unusual infertility circumstances--just poor egg quality and DOR. I just don't have time or money to experiment with someone who is less experienced, which is why I initially signed up to see him.
Is it really the case, as someone described above, that at GW it would be typical to have an initial consult and then it would take several months to get going? I have been with another RE out of state for a year and we've done all the tests you can do. We're ready to get going and want to be able to just pick up where we leave off with the other RE. Has anyone else been able to do this fairly seamlessly and quickly at GW? |
Anonymous
Dr. F patient here, had all my testing done elsewhere before going to GW. He did not ask to repeat any testing. I was able to start IVF the cycle after my initial consultation with him. (It also depends on insurance, if you need their approval). |