Sahar Wertheimer

I highly recommend going to HRC Keck Medical and getting the fabulous Dr Sahar Wertheimer as your fertility doctor. Dr. Wertheimer is an absolute pro and her team is great at handling all your needs. I showed up to my consultation with a long list of questions and the doctor went over each and every one. As a 38-year-old patient who is still single, I wanted to freeze my eggs so that I can have children in the future, when I find a partner. Luckily, I found Dr Wertheimer. My ovaries have some tendencies of PCOS, and so the doctor was able to find the right cocktail that allowed me to really excel with the egg freezing... I ABSOLUTELY RECOMMEND that you GO FOR IT! After one cycle, she was able to retrieve 50 eggs and 31 of them were viable to freeze.

She is a great doctor... trust the process. She is super busy but will maximize your time together with compassion and care. It can feel overwhelming, but she is really there to help guide you and you're in great hands.

The entire process of freezing your eggs basically is this: 1) book your appointment, 2) consult with Dr. Wertheimer (who is super sweet, friendly, and smart), 3) meet with the financial counselor and your personal patient coordinator (who will be your liaison throughout the process). Once you are ready to proceed and figure out your payments, you will have them as your advocates to make it possible. (Shoutout to Maira and to Joanna! --They're great; Dr. Wertheimer has a fantastic team). Once you are ready to freeze your eggs, they'll arrange the medicine and help you arrange for the injectable drugs to be delivered to your door (or to the office, based on your preference). 4) Then you prepare to start and will schedule your appointments at the office. The whole process takes about 2 weeks. -- The doctor meets with patients every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the mornings to give you an ultrasound (to check the progress of how your follicles/eggs are responding to stimulation/the medicine). You will get your blood drawn before each visit and, in the early afternoon, you'll get an email from your patient coordinator to tell you how to tweak your medicine based on your results. Your patient coordinator will be your guide to walk you through your daily needs and the doctor will see you at each appointment. --Then, 5) When your body is ready, you simply follow the instructions that the doctor gives you. - You give yourself a particular medicine on a particular day at the exact time they tell you; then you get your blood analyzed the next day to make sure your levels are where they should be; and then you show up to the Encino clinic for the procedure. 6) Dr Wertheimer will retrieve your eggs and the whole appointment takes about 20 minutes, but you show up an hour early. You find out how many eggs they retrieve immediately after the procedure... and, 24 hours later, they can tell you how many of those eggs are "mature" (meaning, viable to be frozen...and good enough to become embryos). --One thing I did not know before freezing my eggs: the eggs will not be able to be analyzed when you freeze them for quality. For chromosomal abnormalities, and quality issues...you really only will discover those issues when you mix them with sperm--Dr. Wertheimer explains this during the consultation and also will show you data, based on your age, to explain the likelihood of how many eggs you will need in order to achieve your desired amount of kids (what is known as "live births"). TRUST ME: with Dr. Wertheimer and her team, you are in GREAT HANDS!!!! The team at HRC Keck Medical does this all day long and they are REALLY great specialists! THANK YOU to Dr. Wertheimer!!!! She is compassionate, kind, and will maximize your results. I'm so grateful I found her. She is absolutely a special doctor and I have faith she will help me to have children in the future when I am ready. I honestly feel blessed to have found her. Go for it!

There was an egg freezing special at the time. Thankfully! It cost around $6,000.

Dr. Wertheimer was a pleasure to work with. She was always kind and patient and made sure I was comfortable - with procedures, exams, financial issues. She was honest about my chances of success and didn’t push me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable with.

Be clear about your goals and communicate with your team if something feels or seems amiss. Dr. Wertheimer and her team are very responsive and reasonable.

I started three months in advance taking vitamins (prenatals, etc) and we discussed some data behind low dose DHEA, showing increase in number of eggs retrieved and good safety profile, so I did decide to take it. I stayed on my OCPs until 5-ish days before starting injections. Once we started I used follistim, menopur, and then ganirelix. Once it was time for the trigger we used novarel and Lupron. There was one dose adjustment of follistim when we got closer to the retrieval to grow the follicles a bit more but not overdo it. We thought we would retrieve around 8-10 eggs based on ultrasounds but ended up with 14, 10 of which were “good quality.”

Without recalling specifics, it was around 13000$ including 700$ for the anesthesia. I appreciated that the way the medications were prescribed was giving me the minimum I would need, and as I required more we would order more. The deliveries were extremely prompt and this way I didn’t overpay. They were willing to prescribe more but had the option I described above which worked perfectly for me.

I knew I could reach out with any question or concern and would be answered promptly. I knew any news delivered would he shared in a gentle way and with a plan to go forward. I felt important to Dr. Wertheimer and trusted her every step of the way.

To trust her and be open with your thoughts and concerns about the process

What I remember is that when one thing did not appear to be working we came up with a new approach until we got it right

Unsure

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