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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I used to be a huge advocate for Dominion Fertility, where I switched pre-COVID after a horrible experience at GW MFA. However, I went back to Dominion for an IVF cycle this year and it has changed significantly, all for the worse (similar kinds of things to what you've described with Columbia, and then some-I posted about it here a few months back). We switched to CCRM. It's not perfect but it has been a vast improvement over what I experienced at Dominion earlier this year.[/quote]

Just curious - what was negative about your experience at GW?[/quote]

We did our workup with Dr. Comstock, she diagnosed us with unexplained infertility, and then we immediately managed to conceive naturally in two back to back cycles while waiting for our new insurance to take effect. The first was a chemical pregnancy, and the message my nurse left after the 2nd beta confirmed it was a chemical literally said, "You are not pregnant. Dr. Comstock said you have a plan, so continue following the plan." I had to send a portal message in order for Dr. Comstock to call me to explain what had just happened, and since that had been my 2nd chemical pregnancy, I had to ask if I could try progesterone in future attempts to conceive. Then a few weeks later, *poof* we were pregnant again for the 3rd time (2nd time since beginning to work with Dr. Comstock). My beta was not rising as expected, and again, the nurse was not helpful. One day she said it was "not where we want to see it", so I asked what they wanted it to be at that point, and she LAUGHED at my question. We went away for the Christmas holiday having had 4 betas that were kind of all over the place, with our first ultrasound scheduled for the first business day back in the new year. The OB ultrasound was done [u]during morning monitoring[/u] (which is absolutely ridiculous when there's a waiting room full of other patients who want to get in and out as fast as possible to get on with their day). Dr. Comstock happened to be on call that day, so at least it was my own doctor who did it. Even though I was more than 6 weeks at that point, she started the ultrasound by saying that we may not see a fetal pole with heartbeat yet based on my beta levels from two weeks prior. That was a very bizarre thing for her to say, as I knew when we conceived. Anyway, the ultrasound didn't show what it should have shown, she began acting really weird, and said "Let's see what today's beta is." The nurse called hours later to say that my beta of ~2000 at six weeks pregnant was a "good numerical rise" since my last one >2 weeks prior that was in the 600s, and to come back in a week. I was left reeling, truly not understanding what was going on. I emailed Dr. Comstock directly, got a reply from her 2 business days later, and I insisted that I get another beta before going into the weekend. That beta confirmed I was going to miscarry. Dr. Comstock called to tell me this bad news, and then told me to stop taking the progesterone and let it pass naturally. She briefly mentioned that there was a drug that could move it along, as well as an in-office procedure, then told me that I should not do either of those things. [b]She failed to properly educate me on my options and took away my choice.[/b][/u]
In the weeks that followed, she wanted me to come back to morning monitoring to get serial betas drawn to ensure it went back to zero. I had to explain that getting to monitoring between 7:00-7:45am from where I live required me to leave the house by 6am, so why couldn't I just do it at labcorp? That's what I did in the end. In follow-up consult, she recommended recurrent pregnancy loss testing and continuing to try again on our own. By then we were approaching a year of trying on our own. I asked if I should schedule another consult to discuss once the recurrent loss testing was complete. She literally said, "No, I'll call or email you with the results." And she did exactly that and only that. By early March, all the results came back normal, and she let me know by email. She never indicated that she was available to answer questions, to let her know how things were going, or to schedule another consult to discuss a path forward. Her job was to help us make a plan to get pregnant, and she utterly failed us in that, and caused me tremendous trauma in how poorly she handled my miscarriage. There was no sensitivity toward me as a patient from my doctor or the nurses, and communication was poor, at best.

I never met Dr. F., and the GW clinic has turned over all its doctors since him since the time this happened to me. I cannot speculate on what it might be like there now.[/quote]

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