I have a bone to pick.
One that I’ve been sitting on for the last few weeks.
And it has to do with the medical community at large.
But the world of reproductive medicine specifically.
You know that friend I have? The one who got pregnant with Dr. Sher? The one who has endometriosis, and did her research, and found a doctor she believed would address not only her infertility, but also the role her endo really plays in that infertility?
Yeah, well she’s still fabulous. Moving along beautifully with her pregnancy, and learning to love and trust in that little nugget growing inside of her.
This isn’t about her.
Not really anyway.
Instead, it’s about that other friend of mine.
The one who is currently in her 2 week wait after having 3 embryos transferred last week.
For the record – she’s doing fabulous as well. Level headed and optimistic and as stress free as one could possibly expect her to be at this moment.
She’s kind of a rock star.
But a few weeks before her cycle, she wasn’t exactly so Zen.
And that’s what this is about.
It was when the two friends got together that they began discussing the differences in their treatment protocols.
And with friend A already pregnant, friend B of course (naturally) began to worry about the pieces of her protocol that differed.
Namely, the intralipids transfusion that Dr. Sher uses in an attempt to counteract the natural killer cells he believes up to 30% of women with endometriosis have.
The natural killer cells that I have to admit, I can’t help but wonder about with my own failures.
But this isn’t about me.
It’s about friend B. The one who wanted to ensure she was doing everything within her power to achieve the same outcome as friend A. So, she reached out to her doctor to inquire about intralipid transfusions.
And she was immediately shut down.
Told that Dr. Sher was not well respected within the infertility community, and that there was no research or evidence to back up his use of intralipids.
Her request for transfusions during her own cycle was immediately dismissed.
Which is when she followed up with the doctor coordinating her cycle up here in Alaska. Hoping that maybe she would be more open minded. That maybe, just maybe, she would sign off on the intralipids transfusions herself.
Only, she met the same exact reaction she had met with her clinic.
Here's the thing that bothers me the most about this – there are relatively zero drawbacks to intralipids.
No real side effects, risks, or reasons not to do it.
So why not, at the very least, go along with it simply because a patient believes in it?
Because she’s done her own research and feels strongly enough about it to think that the success of her cycle could rely upon it?
I would think that the mental impact of a patient believing she is doing everything possible to ensure a pregnancy would be enough.
The power of positive thinking and all that.
It just bothers me that she was so completely shut down on this topic.
And that not 1, but 2 different practitioners were so quick to discount what Dr. Sher is doing, based solely on the lack of research surrounding it.
Is there anything at all within the medical community that wasn’t at one point in time utilized without first having a ton of research to back it up? This is how these things happen! How they progress! How the research comes to be in the first place!
It just drives me crazy that a patient (or doctor) would be so thoroughly dismissed on this basis.
I know that when I first found Dr. Cook, my doctor up here was hesitant about my seeing him. She was worried that his methods were too invasive, and that his claims of relief were trumped up at best, and completely fabricated at worst.
But I was so passionate about it. About him.
So you know what she did? She did her own research. Asked around amongst her colleagues, learned more about the methods involved in the surgery, and found what she could to assist me in making a decision.
A week later, she called me and told me that she thought pursuing surgery with Dr. Cook was my best hope at finding relief.
And that is how it should be done.
It’s one of the reasons I love my doctor up here. Because rather than simply bat away any ideas she was unfamiliar with or unsure of, she expressed her concern and then asked for time to do a little more research.
She trusted me (and my instincts) enough to look further into something she wasn’t entirely comfortable with.
And in the end – she gave me her full consent and even helped with getting the approval through my insurance company.
It just bothers me that so few in the medical community are willing to think outside the box like this. The percentage of IVF success rate at most clinics hovers around 50%. It’s like flipping a coin. There are no guarantees, no promises, and no way of even kind of assessing an individual’s probability of success.
It’s not like what they are doing is an exact science.
It’s a crapshoot. Completely.
So, why not be open to new ideas? Why not be willing to learn? Why not give something you’re unsure of, but that holds relatively few risks, a chance?
If for no other reason than because your patient believes it might help.
Like I said, friend B is doing just fine.
She is at a blissful stage right now, thoroughly enjoying this period of PUPO (pregnant until proven otherwise).
She even said that if all 3 take, I can have one.
OK, so I called dibs, but whatever.
The point is, she is fine. And she’s at a place of piece with how her cycle has come to be.
But as for me – I’m still angry.
Angry that she was so quickly and easily dismissed.
Angry that if nothing else, she was robbed of a little further piece of mind.
And angry that over a year ago now, when I asked my clinic if there was any possibility at all that there was something else that prevented that perfect embryo of mine from taking, they assured me there wasn’t. They dismissed my request for further tests, and my fear that something within my body could have contributed to the failure. They assured me it was standard protocol to not do any further testing until after 3 failed cycles (and of course, tens of thousands of dollars and a lifetime worth of heartbreak later.) They told me that if I just kept trying – I would get pregnant.
Leading to failure number 2 (2 more embryos gone) just a few months later.
Leaving me to question now – do I have natural killer cells that contributed to those failures?
And if I do, could intralipids have saved my babies to be?
OK, so maybe it is a little about me.
But it just seems so wrong to dismiss something that could be so simple.
Especially when there is nothing to lose.
And everything to gain.
ADSPACE
