One of the lovely nurses from RE's office called this morning. She confirmed that our HSG was completely normal, which is great news! She then proceeded to fill me in on our next plan of action. It went a little something like this:
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Nurse: Dr. G wants to try another round of Follistim and Femara, but this time increase your Follistim dose to 125.
Me: Uh, last time he took me off Femara because in past cycles it was keeping my estrogen levels too low. Also, my last Follistim dose was 150.
Nurse: OH! Uh, yeah, you're right. (kind of stutters nervously about how RE gets caught up moving so quickly in his method of madness, she'll talk to him again and call me back)
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WHAT?! First of all, we have been seeing this RE for over a year but have only seen him twice. Is this normal? He has four offices scattered around Indi.ana and, therefore, doesn't seem to be in town very often. And secondly, this isn't the first time I have had to correct his mistake or recommend a course of action. For instance, a few months ago, J and I requested to have an actual visit with him and came armed with a list of questions. One of my questions was why my estrogen levels seemed to be so low. He nonchalantly looked at my chart, agreed that they were a bit low, and decided we should drop Femara. After that cycle, my estrogen went through the roof (in a good way). Great, right? Sure, except for the fact that we felt like the only reason he thought to make that change is because we asked about it. I understand the need to be proactive, but is it too much to ask that our RE gets to know us a bit better and takes the time to really consider the best course of treatment for us? And that he doesn't make silly mistakes like this morning? I mean, had I not been paying attention, we would have repeated the kind of cycle that proved not to work twice before because of his clerical error.
So, we're going to wait to hear back from the nurse and go from there. I would hate to leave this office -- not because of the RE himself, but because of the two fabulous nurses that we actually deal with on the phone and in person.
Oh my! This is tough. There is a huge difference between having to be proactive and having to be your own DOCTOR! I don't know that I would feel comfortable. From my experience, which I recognize is veeeryyy biased, I just can't imagine what we would have done had we not made the choice to leave our first RE. It was very similar...he wanted to keep repeating the same things over and over. I certainly think it's good that you're on top of it. I don't know that I would feel comfortable only seeing the guy twice. I see my doctor every visit and I never even got into the "big stuff" with him. But in my old RE's defense, I saw him every cycle, too, at least for a consult, and that's when we were doing injectables and IUIs. But we even saw him every cycle when we were just doing Clomid and Femara at the beginning.
ReplyDeleteOooh, could be some tough decisions. I make no secrets of my love for Dr. Jarrett. He's amazing, and I highly recommend him if you need any suggestions. Dr. Henry was my last RE. I was the same way...loved his nurses! But am so glad we made the switch.