Well I am trying to keep up with my schedule of daily posts but life and work keeps getting in my way. Spring Break starts this week so my ability to post daily bits of wisdom to the 3 regular readers of this blog may be limited. My apologies in advance.Screening for ureaplasma is like religion....some people have religion and some do not! Many REs simply treat all patients and some treat none.... However, one issue is absolutely true and that is the presence of ureaplasma does not suggest marital infidelity. On the other hand, if your spouse likes...
vendredi 26 mars 2010
mercredi 24 mars 2010
Sometimes you have to learn a new language when dealing with medical issues. Fertility treatment is no exception. Unfortunately, some of our terms sound very similar....especially those that start with HYST. So we have hysteroscopy, hysterosalpingogram, hysterosonogram and hysterectomy. The last one refers to the surgery performed to actually remove the uterus. Clearly, hysterectomy is not a fertility preserving procedure! So when filling out your...
lundi 22 mars 2010
When I was a medical student at Duke back in the 1980s I spent a rotation with the fertility division that was headed up by Dr. Arthur Haney. Dr. Charles Hammond was the Chairman of the Department and was also an attending in that division. Every Thursday they would have 8-12 laparoscopic surgeries scheduled. A large percentage of these laparoscopies revealed either no problems or very minimal endometriosis. Over the past 20 years the surgical approach to infertility has been replaced by a more rapid move to IVF. However, some patients still benefit...
vendredi 19 mars 2010
TGIF. Yup, it is Friday afternoon here at Dominion and I am looking forward to a free weekend. For the past 10 years it has been just myself and Dr. DiMattina and I can tell you that every other weekend on call can wear you down....especially if the other guy has vacation. Before I joined him, Dr. DiMattina never took a vacation and at one point had to remove his own appendix with a spoon immediately following an egg collection which was performed at 2 am since this was in the days before Lupron...or ultrasound...or anesthesia....or electricity...
jeudi 18 mars 2010
Ovarian reserve is a very important but confusing topic. I would like to share an interesting story about ovarian reserve before getting to the Question of the Day on this day after Saint Patrick's Day. For those reading this blog on Fertile Grounds, feel free to skip to the Question if you have already read this story in my post.DK is a 38 year old who came to see me in September 2008. She and her husband had undergone fertility treatment 3 years earlier at another center and conceived with CC/FSH/IUI but had a quintuplet pregnancy that ultimately...
mercredi 17 mars 2010
Happy Saint Patrick's Day from Dr. G and the rest of the staff here at Dominion Fertility. Let me tell you that Dr. DiMattina's outfit today puts mine to shame! If only all of you could see his day-glo green shoes, belt, tie and hat. Oh well. Perhaps I will post some photos of him this week so you can see what you missed by not hanging out at Dominion Fertility. Most patients are anxious about coming to see the fertility specialist because they just don't know what to expect in terms of testing and treatment. In general, most REs approach the testing...
mardi 16 mars 2010
Being a fertility specialist is a bit like being a detective. You gather the evidence and then work on a hypothesis. Once you have the hypothesis, then you can test it out and see if the problem is resolved. Today I saw a new patient that was very frustrated with her situation and the response that she had gotten from her previous physicians. I listened carefully to her story and then explained carefully what I thought explained her particular problem. We now have a plan to test my hypothesis. If I am right then we will all be very happy, but I...
lundi 15 mars 2010
Well Washingtonian magazine has published its annual "Top Docs" issue and I was pleased to report to my parents that I made the cut again (as did Dr. DiMattina). Yet, several excellent Ob Gyn physicians that I know were not on the list this year. Did they suddenly become terrible doctors? No. However, probably they will lose some patients because of the fact that they were not voted in this year.Popularity contests are probably not the ideal way to choose a physician. Neither is the internet. So how should a patient make such an important decision.?...
samedi 13 mars 2010
I was never sure if I had all my shots as a child. With a father who was a general surgeon all of my camp forms were filled out at home. My Dad would pretty much just make up dates that seemed reasonable. I bet that many of these forms had me getting shots on major holidays and weekends but no one ever seemed to care.When my Mother was 40 years old she stopped getting her period and felt pretty awful....tired, sick, nauseated etc. She asked my Dad what his diagnosis was and he replied "menopause." He snorted when she suggested that she might me...
vendredi 12 mars 2010
Are you familiar with those ads for "Hair Club for Men?" Well, besides the fact that I am losing my hair (which my kids think is hilarious) I have always liked the line where the owner states I am not just the owner...I am also a customer. In the mid 1940s my parents were told that they could never have children. My mother had a bicornuate uterus with one side that was abnormally small. She later found out she was missing a kidney on that same side...
jeudi 11 mars 2010
One of the unique features of the 100 Q&A series of books is that patients offer their view on several of the topics that are covered. As a physician it is easy sometimes to assume that patients have knowledge that they actually don't possess. We do thousands of sonograms every year and yet to the patient these images often just look like weather maps. It's kind of like that scene in the Matrix when they are all watching a stream of numbers flowing down the screen. To us we just see a flow of characters on the screen and yet to them they are...
mercredi 10 mars 2010
So how bad was the snow in Washington, DC? Let me tell you....it was epic! Seriously. I had not seen see snow that deep since the Blizzard of 1978 in Boston when I was only 12 years old (see photo below).The roads were a complete disaster and just trying to get to work was near impossible. I remember a few years ago when we had a lesser storm that I arrived at the office to find myself the only employee who made it in. There were 18 patients waiting...
mardi 9 mars 2010
Well hard to believe that the 2nd week of March is here already. What an eventful month we all had in February as Washington DC was paralyzed by Snowmageddon. Dominion Fertility was open in spite of the terrible weather and several of us stayed for many nights with our friends at the Westin Arlington Gateway. The hotel was a Godsend to us...especially once the power failed at our home and we were reduced to living like small animals huddled together...
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