Pacific Fertility Center

I think he has excellent bedside manner. I've felt his compassion for my situation and his desire to help. He is a very clear communicator. However, during some of my appointments I have felt rushed at times, like there isn't enough time for me to ask questions.

Don't be afraid to ask questions even if they seem obvious. It's the doctors job to explain things thoroughly and in a way you can understand.

approximately 20,000

Dr Schriock is incredible. Took the time to speak to me about my options, years after the retrieval he talked to me about how to ship the eggs to NY, etc. He will explain everything to you in full detail, while also being compassionate. Highly recommended.

Ask to make ultrasound appoints/daily appoints during the cycle with him. His schedule is busy, so be flexible during that week or two, if possible!

15,000 per cycle

I liked Dr. Herbert in general, he was kind and friendly enough. But I would say the warmest/most compassionate doctor in the practice is Schrioc. He proably has the best bedside manner/warmth. Over the course of the many years I was at PFC, I had appointments with all of the doctors, as they cover for each other for u/s and all the way to retrievals and transfers. Dr. Herbert would get on the phone and answer questions and was responsive. It's looking back that I'm not sure he was as creative with treating my infertility. I had 3 retrievals and many transfers there - and don't think there were very many changes to my protocol. That being said, when I asked for some things, for example, for them to let all of my embryos "have a chance" and grow them out and freeze them, even if they were low quality, he let me. He let me transfer them too. Those "bad" embryos at least got me pregnant, though I did miscarry. My current clinic would not have frozen or transferred those low quality embryos. The fact that Dr. Herbert did and I got pregnant, gave me hope to continue - as that was my first pregnancy ever. Had my 1st round of IVF not produced a pregnancy at all, I think we would have quit. So bottom line, I found him more open to listening to my wishes, in that sense and letting me decide. I think that was a good thing. On the other hand, I did bring up a concern with transferring fresh embryos when I am an endometrios patient (a disease that flares up with hormones). He wasn't very open to exploring this and we continued to transfer my best embryos in fresh transfers. My current clinic said they would not have done this with me, full of stim meds. In fact, the trend overall now, is to mostly do FETs. I always wonder if we wasted by best embryos at PFC doing those fresh transfers. I wish he would have taken more time to consider what I was saying.

I think if you are not successful with a protocal or a doctor, ask them to change things. They should learn from the data they have on your cycles. I would also ask them for their success rates with people similar to you. PFC is a big enough clinic now that nothing should be completely new to them. If it is - I would find another clinic. You don't want to be any clinic's guinea pig.

Too long ago and too many to remember specifically. I know I used Follistim, Menopur, Cetrotide. My FETs were (mostly) unmedicated. I got 15 eggs on two rounds, 17 on another. So not a lot of variance there. We tended to have about an 80% fertilization rate. My embryos didn't do well between day 3 and 5 in the lab, so for my 2nd and 3rd round we froze on day 3. I had a few pregnancies, and all ended in m/c - some early and one 2nd trimester. No living children to date.

In 2010, I think IUIs were roughly $2,000 plus meds. For our second & third ERs we did a plan that allowed you to do two ERs if you didn't get pregnant, at a slight discount. That was in the mid-$20,000 range - drugs, monitoring and additional transfers were all in addition to that.

He has been in the field a long time and seems to know his stuff. I wish he would have been better at talking me through things and showing a bit more compassion throughout the process. Compared to other doctors, I think he did a good job during the ultrasounds. He didn't rush through them like many of the other doctors I saw and he was sure to show me each follicle and tell me how it was doing - this I really appreciated.

Don't go into it expecting him to cushion the blow. He is up front and realistic which can be good, but also hard for someone who may be emotional and having a hard time.

I wasn't given much explanation for the protocol used. I now now (only since I have been to another doctor) that he used the long protocol. I took estrogen pills before my cycle and then went on to menopur, follistim and ganirelix for about 9 days. My menopur was 150/night and follistim was around 350/night. He didn't explain there were different options so I assumed this was the only one. During my cycle he also upped my dosage and it wasn't clear why he did that.

my insurance didn't cover anything besides the initial visit so I paid for all ultrasounds as well as the procedure cost, Anastasia, and meds.

Again, mentioning his affability, he is very likable and an easy communicator. After a successful round of ivf with ccs, I had three frozen chromosomally normal eggs. We implanted one, I became pregnant, but no heartbeat at 7 weeks - having a dnc at week 8 - a few months later I implanted the next one, similar outcome. At this point, I had had 5 miscarriages, 7 pregnancies in 4 years.....with one naturally conceived easy live birth so I knew that I could carry to term. I had every blood test under the sun, always normal. I kept asking dr. herbert, 'is there anything that you can think of that would be causing these miscarriages?',...'should we check for anything else before we implant my last frozen egg?', His answer was fair for sure, 'could be anything, we never really know..let's do a medicated implantation this time' (more costly and time consuming for me) Before implanting my last egg, I sought a second option with ucsf, within one hour of meeting me they did a sonogram of my uterus and determined that I had a significant amount of scar tissue in my uterus due to all the pregnancies and dnc's over the last few years. Since I always miscarried around week 8, they determined that this was the most likely cause, the embryo simply couldn't grow any bigger. On one hand I was relieved that I finally had a potential answer for all my recurrent miscarriages, but on the other hand I was astonished that I had seen almost every doctor at PFC (pacific fertility center) over the course of two years and not one of them thought to investigate my uterine cavity. During my sonogram at ucsf, she pointed out all the scar tissue on the screen, it's white and very easy to see even with my untrained eye. A hysteroscopy was performed at ucsf a few weeks after the initial diganosis and a post-op sonogram revealed virtually no scar tissue, again very easy to see the difference with my untrained eye. It seems that an easy routine test in the form of a thorough sonogram could have prevented so much heartbreak, let alone time and money.

Be your own advocate

basic IVF, 12 days on meds, I responded well to meds and 17 eggs were retrieved. I should mention I was 41 at the time and exceeds all stats etc.

I think 25K for IVF plus meds plus another 3K to natera for genetics testing, implant 3K each times 2

Dr Schriock was a good doctor and I would recommend him. In general he was very willing to answer questions and explain information. He is kind and caring. Fertility treatment is stressful and time sensitive, and I definitely have some small quibbles with the overall Pacific Fertility Center process, particularly with the handoff to non-primary doctors late in the process, although I do understand why they need to rotate doctors on call on weekends etc. However overall I would definitely recommend Dr Schriock and PFC.

Make sure to proactively set up telephone consults if you need anything explained during the process rather than expecting detailed responses via email (which is primarily used for urgent/transactional communication only).

Hey was great! He clearly explained all my options to my in my initial consultation. He provided me with clear overview of the what the process would look like from start to finish. Myself and my husband were both extremely happy with him. We always felt like we could ask him questions and reach out at anytime. I would highly recommend him to anyone.

The initial consultation he gives you is extremely helpful. Come to that consultation prepared with all of your questions.

The monitoring appointments were very well organized. There were several time slots I could pick on the day I needed to come in so i could make them work with my schedule.

I wish she would've explained a bit more about the number of eggs actually needed in order to conceive a child. I would've done another round or two of retrievals to be safe. Other than that she provided me with a lot of knowledge of how everything worked, the process, what was to be expected with the injections, side effects, etc. There were no surprises.

Ask questions until you fully 100% understand every detail of the process.

$9000 for egg freezing and meds

She did not come across as sincere to me. It felt like this was a job to her and she did not truly care about my results and the outcome. When explaining the details of egg freezing, she seemed bored having to go through the materials with me.

If you like a straight-up, less warm doctor, Dr. Ryan is a good choice.

N/A

know that she operates in a team environment so even if she's your preferred doc, you won't always get her

IVF itself is a very stressful process. Throughout the process, Dr. Chenette, was always available for our needs, and always very patient, compassionate and knowledgable. In addition he has excellent bedside manners and of course, a very high success rate! :)

His positve attitude and knowledge in the field will bring you success.

Dr. Chenette will tailor a protocol based on his assessment of the patient

IVF itself is a very expensive process. I suggest to check with your insurance to see if there is any coverage

Dr. Chenette came highly recommended to me, so I had high hopes. In our initial meeting, he reassured us that our situation was common and there were lots of avenues we could go down to increase our chances of getting pregnant. I did want to try to be as "natural" as possible and not take drastic measures unless we had to, and I'm not sure that was totally respected. His team made a mistake putting together my schedule for when to take the Clomid, so the first time it didn't work. The second time was a slam dunk, so we were lucky enough not to have to take more extreme measures. The nurse assigned to our case was absolutely fantastic, but other than that I'd say Dr Chenette was just ok, and the rest of the staff was quite frustrating to work with. Our information was not passed correctly from one team member to the next and I found myself having to repeat myself in the same appointment and in one appointment after another.

Get a feel for the whole staff you'd be working with, not just Dr. Chenette.

Isabelle Ryan has a very direct, succinct, blunt manner. That didn’t bother me at first, but at a later stage in my care I realized that many crisply communicated statements really glossed over important nuances, and areas of uncertainty. Our meetings were always very quick, and I left thinking I had gotten all the information I needed, but it’s hard to know what you don’t know. As a small example, I was a first-time patient, and it was never communicated to me that at PFC my doctor likely wouldn’t be performing my retrieval surgery. I now know this is very common, but this shouldn’t be communicated to a patient the first time in the middle of a stimulation cycle. Most importantly, I feel she handled my case poorly from a medical standpoint, and made critical errors which, subsequent doctors pointed out, introduced unnecessary risk. She and her care team overlooked disturbing symptoms that I had and, in retrospect, gave me a treatment which was dangerous rather than helpful. This aspect of my case would not apply to most patients, but I think it speaks to a lax attitude about complications, and an unwillingness to take the time to think beyond the obvious norms. Finally, she was coordinating care with an outside specialist, and the communication about the status of this coordination was bad -- I realized months later that the tests from the outside specialist had actually given me the opposite results that Dr. Ryan had used in her assumptions and care.

I probably would see a different doctor unless you are ready to go home and independently fact check what you hear, and almost act as your own secondary doctor.

Before cycling she had my husband and I do prophylactic antibiotics (zithromax and cipro). First cycle (which ended in a cycle cancellation with no retrieval): 3 weeks birth control pills, started 200 IU Follistim & 75 IU Menopur, this was increased but not sure to what levels. Never triggered because cycle was canceled for poor response. Second cycle: Removed IUD; no birth control pills. Estrace priming before cycle start (4 mg daily). At baseline ultrasound start micro-dose lupron (10 units, twice per day); then starting dose 300 IU Follistim and 150 IU Menopur. Trigger 10,000 IU hCG. Resulted in 19 eggs retrieved.

Not sure how much we paid for the first canceled cycle. Second cycle where we did a retrieval was about $12,000, though they gave us a $1,500 discount because of issues in our first cycle, and because we were self-pay patients. This did NOT include all of the lab tests and drugs, which added several thousand dollars, or the $1500 to Natera which is the outside reference lab used for PGS testing.

Recommended eSET with PGS, but did not do a transfer at PFC so it wasn’t a lengthy discussion.

Eldon was extremely kind and compassionate. He is an expert in PCOS and was extremely thorough and detail oriented in tailoring my protocol to my response. His reasoning was always sound and I always felt he had my best interests at heart.

I can't remember sepcifixally other than every other day monitoring and extremely low dose injections due to my history of extreme response. He ultimately did use an HcG trigger after discussing with me the real risks of OHSS - which did occur.

IVF with PGS- 15k FET- can't remember. 1k or more

He would not transfer more than one due to risks of twin pregnancy. I had PGS tested embryos, but I believe he counseled all his patients this way.

I was very pleased as a patient of Dr. Schriock. He had an extremely warm bedside manner which was important for me. I never felt as though my fears or trepidation I had in the process was insignificant.

She was wonderful!! Very knowledgeable. We did IVF 2 times, the first we were pregnant with twins, but there were problems.... the sack never formed correctly and we miscarried around 9 weeks. She was sensitive with the details of the problems, but also direct. she knew we needed to understand the severity of what was happening. when we did miscarry, we were due to leave for Hawaii for vacation in two days. she organized the procedure to be done on the next day (a Sunday!) so we could keep our plans to go. She also kept in touch to make sure there were no complications while we were gone. Our next IVF we had a successful pregnancy, and she was amazing during that one as well.

Ask a lot of questions. She will be honest.

He started with very negative and scary data on our first visit (That has turned out to be debunked) And, one of the protocols ended in a cancelled cycle and I never had that happen on the 5 following ones. Also, the doctors after that were not impressed with the protocol he suggested for the 2nd round after the first one didn't meet his expectations. So, that concerned me too

FSH 240 and ganirelix for the first one. 7 eggs retrieved and 5 were frozen. (This was the best result I had from any protocol, but every doctor after that did more 'complex' ones.) Then a lupron pill for the 2nd attempt, which failed.

He gave me a candid assessment of my chances due to my age. He did not discourage me to pursue using my own eggs but he was very pragmatic about the statistical outcome.

Concentrate on the end goal - having a baby, and let him suggest the best route to do obtain this given your history.

She is professional and very kind. It's obvious she knows what she is doing and you trust her for that. She is wonderful and very reassuring. She is always gentle and explains things completely. I saw her every visit and she always made time for me.

You're in good hands.

I found the drugs and dosage prescribed and used very effective.

I can't recall

Ask dr. Ryan all the questions you need answers to.

PFC is beautiful and provide great car. Eldon was top-notch and got us pregnant with IUI when he thought the chances were less than 5%

Explore all the options and make your own educated decisions.

Too much detail, not comfortable sharing

I did feel certain Dr. Ryan was on my team through the process. She was supportive and kind and professional. I didn't want to hear the news she was ultimately able to convince me of (that my lack of success was "120% due to egg quality") so I think I continued too long with attempting each method of treatment. Not sure what else she could have done to get through to me, but I do wish I hadn't put my body through so many medicated IUIs, for example.

Really listen and ask questions to make sure you aren't just hearing what you want to hear. She will help you make a plan.

My treatments were so long ago ... I don't remember specifics. I did 10+ IUI. #7 resulted in a pregnancy that was not viable. 1 IVF and 1 cancelled IVF.

I've blocked out the specifics - the costs were high.

I do remember she was very helpful on advising the number to transfer. I understood the pros and cons.

Open minded, kind and professional are qualities I would ascrbe to Dr Herbert. He was recommended to us by a very happy former patient and her faith in him was borne out. We were very happy with him. It was gratifying that he was willing to use a new procedure that limited or most injections and relies instead on vaginal suppositories and oral meds to prep me as the recipient of the donor egg. This was an approach that has been very successful in the UK and I wanted to try it and avoid all the injections. It worked! Herbert had no ego around holding on to his own approach but did his own research and went forward with me in this novel approach with great success.

If you are using a donor egg ask him about approaching it using suppositories vs injections!!!

See previous comments and implant one embryo only.

I don’t recall in detail. It’s been a while!

Dr. Zouves biggest asset is his kindness. He always seemed to be genuinely happy to see us and he was sad at our failed attempts and happy with our successes. He was very honest when he thought it was time to try donor eggs.

Trust him. He wants you to succeed and take home a baby.

cannot remember the protocols but after 2 failures we back off on the drugs to try and get a better quality egg/embryo and even though there were fewer eggs, one of them took :)

there was a discount plan that covered 3 attempts, everything except the meds. Meds could be purchased through the clinic, at a pharmacy or out of the country.

He was thoughtful and easy to talk to. I felt like when things weren't happening he wasn't able to help me figure out a next course of action. At the end I left feeling lost and without hope.

Ask about the plan he has for you as well as what he might do if pregnancy doesn't happen. If you fall under unexplained infertility like I do, ask if there are other ways to give a more explained diagnosis.

$13k for two cycles