Being an overachiever can sometimes be harder than being an underachiever....at least when it comes to ovarian stimulation. I certainly don't want my kids to think that I want them to slack off in their academic and non-academic pursuits. Interestingly, my oldest son had to read the book the "Overachievers" for his AP English class. Man, that is like taking alcoholics on a field trip to a bar! The kids are already stressed out about working real hard and then they have to read a book on just that topic....yikes!Well, being an overachiever in terms...
lundi 30 novembre 2009
mardi 27 octobre 2009
I was not one of the cool kids in high school. Part of this was because I was, more or less, a "goody-two shoes" and gave my parents very little grief (unlike my older brother Steven). I am an Eagle Scout and actually wrote about service to others in my college essays. Although Hahvahd and Yale were unimpressed by my concept of helping others, Princeton lived up to its motto of "Princeton in the Nation's service and in the service of all nations"...
mardi 6 octobre 2009
One of the benefits of working as a Reproductive Endocrinologist is that most patients end up with the outcome that they desired: a family. It may be accomplished with their own eggs and sperm, or donor eggs/sperm, or donor embryo or adoption or foster parenting or even on their own (GASP!). However, when a disaster occurs you can be sure that it will make all the papers and talk shows. By disasters I mean the usual parade of newsworthy events such as Octomom, lost embryos or transfer of the wrong embryos into the wrong patient.There is no doubt...
lundi 28 septembre 2009
The Internet is a wonderful tool. You can find answers to questions almost instantaneously. You can read articles from news sources a world away. You can watch videos of cats falling into fishtanks. What's not to like?And yet, the Internet can allow faceless, nameless individuals to bully, confuse and intimidate vulnerable people who are just trying to get through this confusing maze of infertility treatments. The result is sometimes ugly and mean-spirited.A few years ago several of our patients were posting to a bulletin board where the majority...
mercredi 16 septembre 2009
Nothing too helpful in today's blog...just some ruminations by DrG....I don't have a very long commute to my office here in Arlington, VA on most days, but sometimes some idiot has crashed into a tree on Canal Road or has rear-ended the car in front of him while speaking on a cell phone and I end up in the car for quite some time.... A few years ago I joined Simply Audiobooks, which is like Netflix for books on CD. Over the years I have listened to a range of books from Jane Austen to Steven King and everything in between. I tend to gravitate to...
lundi 17 août 2009
Medicine has been called an art and to some extent this is clearly true. Although statistics, protocols and algorithms exist to guide therapy a thoughtful physician must always take into account the particular needs of his patient. I know that this sounds incredibly obvious but the reality is that with the advent of the internet additional voices have been added to the patient-doctor relationship. I stress to my patients that they are unique and although others may voice their opinions as to the best course of action, the final decision should...
jeudi 13 août 2009
As usual I find myself apologizing for the long delay between blog posts and as usual I have no real excuse except that I am just a bit tapped out....sigh. The summer has flown past and soon we will be back in the grind of school and work with the playtime of summer a distant memory. This Fall will be memorable as my oldest child will be off to college. Hard to imagine. You know, when I started practice I used to get the "you look too young to be my doctor...." but now not so much! I was thinking about looking into microscopic hair transplantation...
lundi 13 juillet 2009
Now some of you that read my last post are thinking - "Sure it's easy for him to say that you only need one embryo but I KNOW that I need more than that..." But I remain steadfast in my view that measurement of ovarian reserve can only get you so far.For example, here is another clinical vignette right out of our practice here at Dominion Fertility:TM is a 37 year old with a history of slightly irregular periods who had been treated previously at another fertility clinic. She was successful in 2004 conceiving after a cycle of CC/FSH/IUI. In 2006...
mardi 7 juillet 2009
Clearly the issue of ovarian reserve strikes many doctors and patients as "clear as mud!" Remember from our past discussions that ovarian reserve relates to the number of eggs that a patient has and the reproductive potential of those eggs. Ovarian reserve is not truly a test of egg quality as a woman's age is the final arbitrator of egg quality. As I am currently unable to make any patient younger, although I could retire if I could, we need to keep the difference between egg quantity (ovarian reserve) and egg quality (age) segregated in our mind.So...
lundi 6 juillet 2009
Fertility doctors are pretty popular at cocktail parties (or so I hear since I really don’t get out much). Between OctoMom and the latest Hollywood star announcing that they are pregnant with twins using a surrogate, there is always some interesting aspect of reproductive gymnastics to be discussed.In the past month I have discussed the use of a gestational carrier with a wide range of patients. Some have had previous uterine surgery that has made pregnancy problematic. Another has a history of severe medical problems that make her a risk for pregnancy...
mercredi 1 juillet 2009
Wow, what a terrible blogger I have been these past few weeks. No new posts for a while and no insightful hints for the 3 regular readers of this blog (sorry Mom, I promise to call this week!). I could make up some incredible story about how I have been performing 80 hours of community service a week or that I have been traveling to South America with certain public officials from South Carolina or that I have been sick for weeks with the Swine Flu....
mercredi 13 mai 2009
I made it back to DC from Boston, thanks for asking. However, the journey was not easy. I boarded my AirTran flight at 6:15pm and at 6:35 pm the pilot announced that the plane was grounded for mechanical problems. Not to worry, advised the gate agent....another plane would arrive and take us to Boston at 8:30pm. Having heard this story one time too many, I hopped on the internet (than you Verizon for my wireless modem) and saw that there was a JetBlue...
vendredi 1 mai 2009
So here I am sitting in Logan International Airport trying to kill some time before heading back to DC and hoping that I don’t catch Swine Flu. I was in Boston all day to attend a special ceremony honoring my father, Dr. Edward Gordon, who just retired from active clinical practice at the age of 86 and ending 60 years of continual practice as a general surgeon. All three of his sons were in attendance as he received several commendations for his contributions to medicine. Following these presentations, Dr. Pauline Chen gave a very emotional presentation...
samedi 4 avril 2009
My wife really hates checking the mail. “There is never any good news in that mailbox,” she usually comments as I carry the heaps of LL Bean catalogs in from the street. Well, yesterday there was something good in the mailbox...my royalty check for sales of that famous book “100 Questions and Answers about Infertility.” As I eagerly opened the envelope dreams of a new car (mine has 119K miles on it) or a new TV (we still have one with a built-in VCR in one room) or even helping to pay for my son’s college tuition (yearly bill is too shocking to...
vendredi 20 mars 2009
A lot of patients ask for advice when trying to coordinate fertility treatments and vacation or business travel. In general, I ask them to consider a couple of factors when trying to decide what to do. First of all, if hoping on a plane were all you needed to do to prevent pregnancy then flight attendants would never experience unintended pregnancies! However, there are reasons to be careful about leaving town following fertility treatments (or during early pregnancy).Clinical vignette A:MS was a 34 year old patient who had never been pregnant....
jeudi 5 mars 2009
Well I guess I have now officially joined Web 2.0 with my own Dominion Fertility Facebook page. Although I am slightly worried that Facebook could prove as addictive as pinball was for me in college I am willing to test the waters and see how it goes.So for all those readers of this blog (all 9 of you)...feel free to visit me on Facebook and become a fan (oh, gag me)....
mardi 3 mars 2009
Usually I am a pretty calm traveler and with the exception of the months following 9/11, flying is usually not something that worries me. This past weekend I flew up to Boston for the day to celebrate the 86th birthday of Dr. Edward Gordon, my father and a recently (yes, recently) retired general surgeon. The flight to Boston on Sunday morning was fine. However, upon landing my brother Steve warned me that we may be staying for longer than just the day if the big storm brewing ended up slamming New England as predicted.Well, the party was great...
jeudi 19 février 2009
I am a child of the '80s. I still listen to Fleetwood Mac (yeah I know they really are a '70s band) and Supertramp. I like the Back to the Future movies and I still remember how I felt when Darth told Luke he was his father...whoa! I never really liked the TV show "Eight is Enough" and clearly the recent events on the Left Coast have those of us who practice reproductive medicine scratching our heads.My patients know that I am not a big fan of twins. The problem with twins is the risk of preterm labor, preterm delivery and prematurity. Although...
mardi 3 février 2009
Readers of this blog know that we believe in Natural Cycle IVF. Although some of our colleagues think that this is akin to believing in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Alien Abduction and in the recently passed Economic Stimulus Package.....we really do practice what we preach.We receive calls from all over the US asking about Natural Cycle IVF and I usually encourage patients to ask their local RE to see if they can do it rather than traveling to...
samedi 24 janvier 2009
The sun is out and DrG's fingers have defrosted enough to allow me to add a new post to the blog. Camping is great but it was about 7 ° F on early Saturday AM. I have not ever been quite so cold as I was at 2 am, huddled like an animal inside 2 sleeping bags. My son was quite warm but he had the winter weight sleeping bag and a new fleece liner while I had the light-weight bag with a fleece liner...When we woke up it was snowing INSIDE our tent as the moisture from our breath had frozen on the inside of the tent!My son announced to his mother...
jeudi 15 janvier 2009
Given that it is a brisk 19 degrees here in the Nation's Capitol, I thought that it would be appropriate to share a patient story that had some freezing in it...The use of cryopreservation has really helped us to reduce the risk of multiples and improve the overall long-term success rates with ART. More recently, vitrification, an ultra-fast freezing technique, has been used by our clinic and others to markedly improve the success rates with blastocyst stage embryos. The previously used slow-freezing approach was OK for day 3 embryos (as seen in...
jeudi 8 janvier 2009
Well, here we are at the start of another new year and I have a bucketful of New Year's Resolutions that are unlikely to last until the Spring but you never know....2 years ago I did the Special K diet for an entire year. Dr. D would make fun of me every day as he enjoyed delicious lunches and I had my little bowl of Special K. Of course, by dinner time I was so darn hungry that I would wolf down an excessive amount of food thus defeating the purpose of the Special K diet.This year I also resolve to blog more frequently. Ha! We'll see how long...
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