My husband was diagnosed with primary testicular failure resulting in azoospermia (no sperm) in November 2014. We worked with Dr. Fenig at Chesapeake Urology and were very happy with him. From supplements to clomid (yes, for a guy) to a testicular biopsy (TEST), he helped us navigate a terrifying, low success diagnosis. The surgery was successful, my IVF cycle was successful, and we have the most perfect kids from it all. He gave us the direct number to his scheduling assistant and gave us priority in getting on his calendar. He even gave us his personal cell phone number. He was absolutely committed to our success.

Thank you for sharing your experience! I'm sorry you had to go through that. We are thinking about doing IVF next year but also hoping I'll get pregnant before then. We want to see a good urologist in the meantime just to see what's causing the problem.

Hi, a guy here. We went through a similar experience. Long story short, we went the urologist route. I had varicocele surgery, which was much more painful than the doctor said it would be. More to the point, it had no benefit on getting pregnant. Ultimately, it just delayed things by a year, during which time my wife became less fertile. We were ultimately lucky in having a beautiful boy but she had to go through a lot of IVF cycles. In hindsight, my belief is that we both would have been spared a lot of trauma if we had skipped the urologist and gone directly to IVF.

Greg Bernstein in Alexandria and Arlington - he specializes in male infertility, etc

My husband saw Dr. Shin at Shady Grove and had a good experience. He had a varicocele repair with him too.

+1 on looking for recs. My DH has ED and saw a urologist out of state who humiliated him so we need one in DC with a really really good bedside manner.

My DH saw Dr. Paul Shin several years ago. I heard that he had joined Shady Grove Fertility a while ago. I don’t know if you need to be a patient at SG to see him.

They were dismissive and had terrible bedside manner. Feel like we didn't get any useful info from the appointments. The first one just recommended a Theralogix supplement and said to come in for another SA in 3 months. The second urologist said that fixing the problem (if there is one) will take 4+ months and to just go for IVF.

The second doctor was better than the first but I just wanted to see if anyone had a better experience.

What did you not like about the other practices you already visited?

My husband has fluctuating sperm count. His first SA was terrible and second one (a month later) was great. We thought the first one was a fluke but then his sample for our IUI this past month was similar to the first SA.

Our RE suggested IVF or we go see a urologist. We aren't quite ready for IVF, so we are willing to find out the cause of the problem.

We've seen two urologist in the area so far and had terrible experiences.

Does anyone have any good recommendations?