First RE appt next month. What to expect?

Question

TTC since October 2014, no BFP ever. Four rounds of Femara and an HSG has shown total left blockage. I assume IVF will be the order of the day. What's gonna happen at the first appointment?

Answer

Call ahead and find out exactly what you'll be doing and what you'll need to be prepared for at the consult. They will most likely want your partner there too. What's going on with your body is kind of like a puzzle your RE will try to solve...some REs go in a different order (they want to do treatment before diagnosis). But since my insurance only covered diagnosis, I really wanted to get that figured out before doing treatments, so I found a new RE. It turns out that if I had done Clomid and IUI right after discovering that one of my tubes was blocked, as my first RE suggested, I would have been at high risk for ectopic pregnancy. So I was glad to find a more experienced RE.

Answer

I've had a first appt. with two different REs. With the first one, my husband and I came prepared for talking and then an exam, but she apparently does the consult one day and the exam 2 days later (read: 2 co-pays!). Additionally, she had my husband come in the day in between to do a semen analysis. In the consult, I showed her all my cycle charts and LH tests, and she asked both of us a lot of questions and made some preliminary guesses about what was going on (PCOS, not ovulating). Then I came back for the exam and blood tests 2 days later. They use a vaginal ultrasound, which is a little uncomfortable/painful depending on a few things. The part that hurts the most to me is when they jam the wand into your ovaries to count follicles. But you'll have to put up with that vaginal ultrasound until you're about 7 weeks pregnant, and then you graduate to the one on the tummy! :)

When I went in for a second opinion with my current doctor, she looked over all my labs and HSG X-rays, recommended surgery instead of IUI, and then did the exam to confirm findings. So it made for a very long day (but only 1 specialist co-pay). At the end, my husband and I met with their financial specialist to go over what my insurance would cover and what we would need to pay out-of-pocket for the exploratory laparoscopic surgery and future potential treatments.

Answer

My first appt, they had both my husband and me come in and we discussed medical history and cycle history. We talked about what my REI suspected was going on, and then did a vaginal ultrasound and bloodwork to confirm the diagnosis, which was pcos in my case. I'm in my first round of treatment

Answer

My first was a consultation (break down of pricing and the protocol), blood work and a trans vaginal ultrasound. Gl!

First RE appt next month. What to expect?

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