GW patients- really need some advice! Which nurse do you recommend at GW? And are you happy at GW?

[Anonymous]

Hello, I really don't know what to do and need some advice. I've been at GW for a month after transferring from Shady Grove. 39 years old, started fertility testing 2 years ago but after hurting my back, did not start treatments until last December. After the donor egg talk at Shady Grove (after 3 IUIs and 1 IVF) in June, I decided to switch. Have been taking supplements and getting second opinions in the meantime. I decided to go with GW and had my initial appointment with Dr. F at the end of August. I loved him and thought he was great. He ordered a lot of repeat testing and told me to call on day 1. Well on day 1, my hormones were not what they expected so they told me not to do the other testing (FSH, thyroid, etc) until they could figure out my cycle. I have been monitoring twice a week for a month. I understand they're just collecting data points and trying to figure out what's going on, but each time my nurse Donna calls- she is so short and the call lasts like 30 seconds. I've tried to email her questions and she doesn't respond! When I ask her on the phone what's going on, she is so vague-she says they're baffled, they don't know what's going on with my hormones, etc. After 4 weeks this is beyond frustrating to have no answers, no plans, no earthly idea of when I can start IVF again, no possible theories as to what's going on. Donna just says "I don't know" flatly- I have to pull information out of her. Last Friday I insisted on talking to the dr. that was doing monitoring and told her I wanted to go ahead and do the other tests, as I suspected my thyroid was out of whack. So I did those last Friday. Today I went in for monitoring again, and when Donna called me today, she said your bloodwork from this morning shows you did ovulate last week, so call us on day 1. That was it, she was ready to hang up. I was like "wait a minute, what about all the other labs"? She said "oh yeah." They were normal except your prolactin and TSH were elevated. Call us on day 1! I was like 'hold on, what does this mean?" She said "oh we want you to repeat those tests when you're fasting." I said, "I was fasting when I took those." "Oh you were?" "I'll call you back." Long story short, the whole conversation went like this for both phone calls. She is not on top of things and seems uncaring. She eventually just said "call and schedule with your dr, I'm not a dr- and you better go ahed and do it because he gets booked months out." "I said well what about the thyroid, won't that require medication?" She said "yeah probably" but you'll have to ask your dr. So you want me to wait a month to ask my dr a question of whether I should take a medication which I'll have to be on for at least a month, therefore delaying this whole process even further?! Ugh, I wanted to scream. I'm sorry for this long post but I had to vent and I've just decided I cannot take Donna anymore. This process is too emotional and too expensive to put up with her. And I don't know enough about all this to constantly push for tests, medications, etc- I thought that was what the nurse was for. Please for those of you at GW, can you tell me who the nurses are and who would you recommend? I called and asked if I could switch nurses last week just wondering, and the front desk said yes but they don't recommend it. So now I'm ready and I need some recommendations because I don't want another terrible, awful nurse like Donna. I hate to dump on her but she is just not the one for me. Thanks so much ladies!