Eleni Greenwood Jaswa

I feel like I am talking to my honest and compassionate doctor friend. She takes into account my family, my financial circumstances, my personal background. For example, I am from a minority group that is grossly under-represented in research. Dr Jaswa is very aware of this and engaged to have culturally appropriate discussions around this. She is also realistic without being cold or mean. Given fertility is such a difficult and emotive health topic, I weirdly leave every meeting with her feeling positive and optimistic.

If you have a hunch, she will listen and look into your concerns and provide you evidence. Be bold and ask her questions.

We have had one successful ICSI treatment resulting in our first child. We needed help to add to our family and she has let us try only with meds for 6-8 months before we go onto our ICSI cycle. As the one before is 'tried and true' we will use that. This is one of the first clinics that is proactive in using an Estrace priming cycle. If you have low ovarian reserve, this is a miracle worker. You take estrogen before your period and then do the GonalF/Menupur treatment as normal.

The first time we had Progyny but now we are out of cycles. Now our insurance covers 50% or the clinic allows 60% of full cost for self-pay. Per appointment is is a few hundred dollars. The full cost of one ICSI with meds and procedure is prob around $15,000 self pay

The first time she only did one egg when I was 36. Now I am 39 she recommends 2 eggs.

Dr Jaswa is compassionate and warm. She is patient and made herself available to answer questions. I never felt rushed when I spoke with her. I was disappointed in the number of eggs retrieved in my first cycle, so Dr Jaswa reviewed my medications and how I responded and proposed a new protocol for my second cycle, which was more successful (yay!).

You probably won't get to see Dr Jaswa very often (due to the style of the UCSF clinic), but you should absolutely take advantage of the portal and send along all your questions to the care team. They'll get back to you, and if you have concerns that you'd like Dr Jaswa to address specifically, they will forward to her for her response.

1st protocol (age 33): A week following ovulation, I started estrogen patches (replaced patch once every 48 hours) until my period. Once I got my period, I went in for a baseline ultrasound and bloodwork and then began injecting 150mg of Gonal F and 150mg of Menopur nightly. I was responding very quickly -- some of my follicles were growing much more quickly than others -- so by day 4 I started injecting cetrotide in the mornings to slow/prevent ovulation of the biggest follicles. I triggered on day 7 of medications with 5,000mg of Novarel/Pregnyl and 450mg of Gonal F. They retrieved 15 eggs, but 2 were too mature and 3 were immature, so they froze 10. 2nd protocol (age 35): Because my eggs hadn't really grown synchronously last time, resulting in too much dispersion in maturity, Dr. Jaswa suggested trying the lupron-down protocol to start my cycle. The idea was to better suppress my cycle at the start so that the follicles would grow together. This was more or less successful. One week following ovulation, I started injecting 10 units of Lupron nightly. On day 12, I went in for a baseline ultrasound and bloodwork; I had one more night of Lupron injections and on day 13 I began injecting 150mg of Gonal F and 150mg of Menopur nightly. I went in for ultrasounds and blood work every couple days. Again, I was responding very quickly to medication, but this time my follicles at least were growing more in synch. I triggered on day 7 of medications with 10,000mg of Novarel/Pregnyl and 450mg of Gonal F. They retrieved 12 eggs and all were mature and frozen.

Egg-freeze cycle: $7,117 (package through ARC Fertility which included monitoring appts, ultrasounds, retrieval, anesthesia, freezing + 5 years of storage) Medications: ~$3,800 (purchased through Alto Pharmacy)