2016 - 2018, Successful
9
10
[Under Dr. Randall Barnes] I took 300 units of Folistim and 150 units of Menopur for 5 days, and then started a daily shot of Ganirelix to prevent ovulation. Day 10 I took my trigger shot and went in 36 hours later for my ET. 7 eggs were retrieved, 4 fertilized. I also thawed my 18 frozen eggs, 11 which fertilized. Overall, 15 eggs fertilzed and we are now waiting for our results on day 5 blastocyst stage, after which the remaining blastocysts will be biopsied and sent for PGD testing.
Northwestern Fertility Clinic is a large practice, which means you deal with lots of different people throughout the process, from multiple nurses, to schedulers, to financial advisors, to psychologists, to doctors who are on call the day of your procedures. It is not guaranteed your doctor will perform your retrievals or transfers. Overall, I had a positive experience with NFC, and with Dr. Barnes.
How was your experience with Randall Barnes at Northwestern Fertility & Reproductive Medicine?
Northwestern Fertility Clinic is a large practice, which means you deal with lots of different people throughout the process, from multiple nurses, to schedulers, to financial advisors, to psychologists, to doctors who are on call the day of your procedures. It is not guaranteed your doctor will perform your retrievals or transfers. Overall, I had a positive experience with NFC, and with Dr. Barnes. I am in the midst of my treatments still, so I am not able to speak to my results yet... that is still to be determined! Also, in the midst of my treatment, and after several appointments with Dr. Barnes, I received a letter from Northwestern letting me know that he was retiring. So, in the midst of my treatments, I was left without a doctor and had to switch to a different doctor in the practice. My husband and I were surprised that this was never mentioned to us during multiple appointments with Barnes or with the nurses. It seemed like something they should tell us, so we could've started the process with a different doctor verses being caught off guard. This was my biggest critique of working with the NW Fertility clinic thus far.
What's one piece of advice would you give a prospective patient of Randall Barnes at Northwestern Fertility & Reproductive Medicine?
Dr. Barnes is now retired from Northwestern Fertility Clinic.
Describe the protocols Randall Barnes used in your cycles at Northwestern Fertility & Reproductive Medicine and their degree of success.
I took 300 units of Folistim and 150 units of Menopur for 5 days, and then started a daily shot of Ganirelix to prevent ovulation. Day 10 I took my trigger shot and went in 36 hours later for my ET. 7 eggs were retrieved, 4 fertilized. I also thawed my 18 frozen eggs, 11 which fertilized. Overall, 15 eggs fertilzed and we are now waiting for our results on day 5 blastocyst stage, after which the remaining blastocysts will be biopsied and sent for PGD testing.
Describe your experience with Northwestern Fertility & Reproductive Medicine.
The clinic itself feels well organized considering the volume of patients they serve. At times I felt like it was a cattle call with the other women who were coming in for their routine early morning blood work and ultrasound appointments, but that comes with the territory when your'e working with a large clinic. Most of the time they got me in and out within 30 minutes for my morning appointments. Additionally, the clinic itself is a beautiful space, and the views overlooking lake michigan with soft music playing definitely make the experience more pleasant.
Describe your experience with your monitoring appointments at Northwestern Fertility & Reproductive Medicine.
Morning appointments were an open window from 6:45-7:45am. Some mornings the wait was longer than others. My shortest appointment time was around 20 minutes, and my longest was 45 minutes.
Describe the costs associated with your care under Randall Barnes at Northwestern Fertility & Reproductive Medicine.
Luckily my insurance covers this process.
Describe Randall Barnes's approach to eSET (elective single embryo transfer) vs. multiple embryo transfer at Northwestern Fertility & Reproductive Medicine.
My doctor strongly steered us toward eSET, although I had my heart set on transferring 2 embryos. He explained that due to complications from multiples, the best practice now is to recommend an eSET.
What specific things went wrong at Northwestern Fertility & Reproductive Medicine?
- Provided conflicting information
- Failed to convey critical information
Describe the specific things that went wrong at Northwestern Fertility & Reproductive Medicine.
The two things that went wrong were:
- No one told us that Dr. Barnes was retiring, and we ended up starting the process with him, only to be informed by letter that he was retiring. So, for part of my process I had no assigned physician.
- I received information from one nurse that I couldn't start my IVF cycle because our PGD test wasn't ready. After reaching out to try to get in touch with my regular nurse and telling her we wanted to get started anyways, our regular nurse let us know that we could in fact get started. So there was around a 2 day window of a lot of dissapointment when we heard back from the first nurse that we couldn't get started, when in fact we could.