Sarah Keller

This doctor was not the warmest doctor I’ve ever seen, but she was kind and matter of fact. She spent a great deal of time covering the risks of continuing with a fresh transfer while I had a mild case of OHSS, which I appreciated. She was scheduled to do my embryo transfer. They try to get you to allow a medical student to do the transfer. I did not feel comfortable with that and I think she sensed that she she told me she would do the transfer. She did and I had a great result with this doctor.

The way the clinic works, you might never see your doctor after the initial consult.

I don’t remeber

I live in IL so fertility treatment is covered by insurance

Dr. Keller is very personable, knowledgeable and caring. She was very proactive in trying to find the reason Ikeep having miscarriages. Though no reason was discovered, I still have trust in her care and believe she is making the right decisions.

While Dr. Keller is very knowledgeable the fertility science is not absolute. She will work her hardest for the best results.

I have only used Dr. Keller for FETs. She ran multiple test for recurrent miscarriage on me and they all came back negative. For my frozen cycle we transfered 1 embryo. My protocol was: Day 1(March 2nd) start of period- start 2mg estrace 3x daily March 15- uterine lining check March 17- start 1/2ml PIO and azithromiacin (today only) March 18- Medrol 2x daily for 5 days and up PIO to 1ml March 22- Embryo transfer and continue 1ml PIO and estrace 3x daily Beta is 12 days after transfer

My FET was $3,800. My saline ultrasound and all other blood was covered by my insurance.

Dr. Keller prefers transferring 1 high quality embryo at a time. But for my next transfer I have a fair and poor quality left she recommended transferring both. She will go over the risks of multiples if you decide to transfer more than 1.

Dr. Keller is very knowledgeable and an expert in her field. I've never felt she has pushed us into spending more money than we absolutely have to. She has not recommended PGS testing for our second IVF cycle, citing that it does not improve birth rates. She never rushes us out of the office and takes the time to answer all questions thoroughly. She often seems flustered or nervous and for that reason I would recommend other doctors in this practice over her.

Do your research. Ask questions. Tell her what's bothering you. Trust her plan of care.

In 2016 I did 3 clomid IUIs without trigger shot. None were successful and I was disappointed that no Ultrasound or hCG blood levels were obtained during any of the cycles. I didn't see Dr. Keller at all during this time and really felt like nobody cared if they were successful or not. Cycle 1 IVF was better. I do not have ovulatory dysfunction so Keller recommend an agonist protocol for my first IVF cycle. In retrospect I responded quickly to the medications, maybe too quickly because we got 10 eggs and only 2 5-day embryos. Our fresh transfer resulted in a chemical pregnancy and our FET resulted in a miscarriage at 7 weeks. Dr. Keller said that a quick stimulation can result in poorer egg quality. For cycle two she is doing a long antagonist which will hopefully allow slower development of my follicles and give better egg quality.

The line to check in can get long some days but once checked in blood draws and Ultrasounds are done quickly.

I think IUIs were around $350 each plus the copay for Clomid. For one egg retrieval/IVF with ICSI, a frozen transfer and fresh transfer we paid almost $13k and my insurance covered $4k.

Dr. Keller was open to both single and double embryo transfer for us. We elected single transfer to avoid a twin or triplet pregnancy.

Being a nurse, I have learned about effective communication. Having effective communication with physicians is always key to experience excellent care. After my husband and I miscarried our baby boy at 17 weeks, I learned to be an advocate for my care even more. I did not have complications after my D&C surgery after miscarriage. I however was diagnosed with an uterine arterial venous malformation which is very rare. I was under my general OBGYN at the time I was diagnosed and Dr. Keller which is my infertility specialist. Many doctors were consulted to see if they had an idea of how to treat the AVM in my uterus. A month or so after my diagnosis, I was told it would not be in my best interest to carry children for my safety and health. Dr. Keller was my main physician who helped me through my time of this diagnosis. She understood how hard this time was because we have never had any children and I was only 26 years old at the time. Every time I was seen by her, I felt as if she was fighting for answers for my husband and I, seeing everything in our best interest. Time went by and I ended up hemorrhaging, which is a complication of the uterine AVM, and admitted to the hospital multiple times in a months span. While the bleeding would start and stop, the doctors were trying to figure out how to save my fertility without doing anything to drastic. After failed attempts to do so, I ultimately had to make the decision to get a hysterectomy for my health and safety. Dr. Keller was always there, one call away, to answer all my questions and concerns. I wanted to make sure that this was the best decision for myself and that there weren't any other options available. I trusted her decision, as did my husband. Now, fast forward to a little over a year later, and were are about to do an IVF cycle to ultimately have a surrogate carry our baby. After a couple of months of trying to heal mentally and physically, my husband and I are ready for our next steps into starting our family. The first appointment we had with Dr. Keller to meet to chat about IVF was one I will never forget. After sitting with her, discussing all that is involved with IVF, Dr. Keller looked at us and said, "I want you to get your baby! That is my goal here!". It made me feel as if I wasn't alone and I felt as if my husband and I are in the best hands. She always asks how I am doing when I meet with her, how I am healing, and just how I feel overall. My experiences that I have gone through in the past year and half are something I never expected. I never dreamt of not being able to carry our children. It sure does make it easier having Dr. Keller sincerely care about my husband and I and our ultimate goal which is to start our family. There is nothing bad I could say about Dr. Keller!

That she is trustworthy and will fight for the best care for you. She will always listen and respect your decisions. Effective communication!

I am about 3 weeks away from our very first round of IVF.

I will know a more detailed cost estimate soon. Since we are just beginning our first IVF cycle, I am not sure of the overall costs. I estimate it being close to $20,000.

Dr. Keller has discussed her approach to both because of us needing to use a surrogate since I cannot carry. The decision mainly depends on the surrogate and what they agree too, but she does mention it is best to not do a multiple embryo transfer for surrogate to carry. It costs more and many more risks involve is my understanding.

Strengths- she knew our history and us as people. She was open to sugggestions of next steps in treatment and was very knowledgeable in statistics of different procedures like scratch test, assisted hatching, ICSI, etc and she explained procedures and set up expectations for us. She truly cared about us as a couple. She even talked us through next steps on another cycle right after her father passed away. She is selfless. The weakness- because of her compassion I think she was less direct than we needed about my diagnosis of diminished ovarian reserve. She expressed the panel of docs at clinic would advocate for donor eggs but said we could continue to try. In hindsight I feel it would have been better to be more blunt about our chances with own eggs so we could have moved forward with donor eggs sooner. Overall, I think we had to come to that acceptance before anything. I’m glad she introduced the topic to us and moved ahead with lightening speed thereafter

Be proactive and know what you want. She will be there to support your treatment plan and advocate for you.

With DOR- we tried femara cycle day 5-9 plus follistim but had to convert to IUI. We did 2 antagonist cycles with gonal-f (225) and menopur (225) with one cycle doing an estrogen prime. Last cycle we did estrogen prime plus micro dose Lupron flare anatagonist

We had help with insurance. The largest out of pocket cost was donor reimbursement fees which were $5000 plus adminustrative costs which were $3000

She showed us her statistics at the clinic and discussed risks, benefits and chances with eSET & multiple transfers but left the decision up to us ultimately

Dr. Keller is very candid which I appreciate. She gets right to the point. She doesn't sugar coat. I feel that she absolutely has my best interests at heart. I know she has a lot of other patients but I don’t really feel like “just a number” to her. I wish I could see Dr. Keller at every procedure but Washington University rotates doctors doing procedure. However, I think there are many pros to this system. I have had egg retrievals and transfers on holidays, weekends, even Sunday. I appreciate that they have a large group of doctors for this reason. And they meet every week to discuss cases and bounce ideas off of each other.

I would just warn them that they might feel overwhelmed at first or feel like “just a number” but Dr. Keller really cares.

Dr. K switched my to an antagonist for my second retrieval. Therefore I could do a Lupron trigger since the first egg retrieval resulted in mild OHSS. Antagonist with the Lupron trigger was soooo much easier on my body. She also suggested freezing my embryos at 2PN (right after fertilization) rather than grow them to blast and then freeze. I didn’t have luck getting embryos to blast stage during the first IVF. So this way I can still do a frozen transfer (let my body calm down for a couple months) and still have the option of a 3 day transfer if necessary.

For my first cycle (monitoring, retrieval, and transfer), insurance was billed $21,000. This was MORE than I was originally told. Meds were $3,800. Luckily I have fairly good insurance. For my second cycle (monitoring and retrieval - no transfer yet), insurance has been billed $17,862. Meds were about the same.

I've done one transfer so far. We transferred 2 embryos at her suggestion. This was because it was day 5 and they were not quite blasts yet so she thought 2 would be better than 1.

Dr Keller is exceptional. She is very compassionate and thorough. She takes into consideration the whole picture when coming up with a plan. She went over both mine and my husbands issues. She made sure you understood before you left her office. She gave options instead of trying to dictate every move. She is highly recommended.

Go see her sooner than you think you should. You will not be disappointed in her care.

I had previously had two egg retrievals at a different place with poor results. I went to Dr Keller for a second opinion. My diagnosis was basically unexplained infertility. She gave me the option to try less expensive treatments with IUI plus clinic first because I have a strong family history of breast cancer and the less hormones the better for me. She said sometimes if it is an issues with egg quality the less you mess with the eggs the better off you are. IUI plus Clomid resulted in a pregnancy the 3rd try, however it was an ectopic pregnancy. After 3 more attempts she recommended IVF which we are currently planning to do soon. The last IUI I took Femara instead of Clomid she wanted to see if it might work better for me.

IUI 383 per cycle.

She has recommended two embryos (maximum) transfer when the time comes if possible.

She is concise, but explained my conditions in full detail, even provided drawings if that helped us understand why some things did/did not work. She always walks us through each procedure at least once, if not twice. She is thorough in understanding my body and our treatment. We are returning patients and she loves to hear about our son, who was conceived with her help. The first round we had some miscommunication that caused some confusion, but it was easily fixed and she made sure it did not happen again.

She will cover everything and she is very knowledgable in her field. If it doesn't make sense at first, ask questions and she will be happy to explain and help in any way she can.

Because of my diagnosis we went straight to IVF treatments. I had other procedures, but do not recall exact names or reasons. I received hormones orally and injected. She adjusted my thyroid medicine as my blood work results were obtained. I had a fresh transfer which resulted in a chemical pregnancy and frozen transfer which resulted in a live birth. Because of my previous results, she is following the same course of treatment this round.

I am unsure about total clinic costs. Copays are $40 and my insurance has always covered 80% of expenses. I know the medication cost about $1,500.

Dr. Keller was very kind and compassionate while still being honest about our chances. We have unexplained infertility which is very frustrating and she did her best to balance between looking for answers to why we couldn’t get pregnant and getting pregnant itself. She let us decide how long we would spend doing diagnostics because she knew we didn’t want to wait too much longer to try to get pregnant. She spent as long as we needed during consultations to ensure we got all of our questions answered. She seemed genuinely thrilled for us when our embryo transfer was successful.

Be aware that you will not always see dr. Keller for all treatments.

They were able to schedule early morning to avoid missing work which was great. I never waited more than 20ish minutes for these appts

We had insurance that covered some of our costs but I think for retrieval and transfer (not including meds) cash price was around 13k (without insurance)

We were told that because we had one embryo of good quality on day 5 and one that was lagging slightly behind, our best chances were to transfer both as this would increase our chances of getting pregnant. We were told if we did not transfer our embryo that was slightly behind, it would likely not make it to freeze so we decided to transfer both.

I loved having her for my doctor. We discussed everything that needed to be talked about. I had done some research on my own before our consultations and then asked questions throughout when they came up. When we did the iuis, the timing was off but that was probably partly because of how my cycles fell, usually over the weekends was when I would ovulate. They were all natural cycles because she wanted to keep things as close to natural as possible if we could. When they proved to not be working, we tried a medicated cycle and I overstimulated. I came in for an ultrasound and we decided to have another consultation. Over the phone, we discussed our next step, she thought I would respond well to the meds,which was ivf. We were able to start immediately and were both excited and nervous. There is more than just her when it comes to ivf. There are several doctors who work together and decided which methods and medicines should work best for each ivf patient. They all specialize in different areas and some overlap with other doctors but the made me feel better for choosing her.

Be open and ready to ask questions if you don't understand something. She will answer any question you have and won't judge you for it. Even if it seems small or silly. Ask anyway. She was able to answer my questions and provide the information I needed to make our decisions.

They scheduled between 7:30 - 9:30 am. They would put you down in a time slot but if you happen to show up a little early they were usually pretty good about getting you in early if not right one time. There usually wasnt much waiting when they scheduled you like this. There were several utlrasound techs and several ultrasound rooms. Different times during the day were for different types of appointments.

She was sincere, helpful and understanding. I could not recommend her more. We had issues at retrieval resulting in my eggs having to be frozen and we were not able to do a fresh transfer. She did everything she could to make a hard experience more comfortable.

Enjoy the tough experience of infertility with her. She is patient and understanding.

I don't remember them to be honest. The day is a blur with everything that happened.

My insurance covered a lot but it has a capped limit. I know I am close to have spent 25,000 in procedures alone and 9,700 in meds.

There was no strong preference.

Dr. Keller is warm and compassionate, she talks to us and not at us. She lets us know exactly what to expect each visit. She is also very thorough and detail oriented. You can tell she really wants you to succeed.

Ask questions, don't worry if you think they are "dumb", the doctor is happy to answer all question and make sure you are well informed. No question is a dumb question.

We are doing are on our first official cycle. I will be starting injections at the end of April and hopefully by the end of may we will be doing the transfer of embryos

Not sure.

Dr. Keller successfully got me pregnant and was a compassionate Doctor. Her nursing staff was also great!

Utilize the patient portal, that is the fastest way to get a response

Dr. Keller is a condescending bully. Her contempt for my concerns, and indeed, my intellectual capacity in general, was palpable. Before my procedure, she tried to prescribe me a medication without any explanation. When I inquired further, I was told the medication (which had significant side effects like nausea and syncope) was not necessary after all. On the day of the procedure, she preemptively made choices for me on my consent form, warned me not to let the big words on the form "scare" me, and declined to explain technical aspects of the procedure (oocyte retrieval). There is no denying she is an experienced clinician, so if respect and thoughtfulness aren't part of your criteria for a physician, by all means, visit Dr. Sarah Keller. Personally, I will be going elsewhere.

Be prepared to ask specific questions, since she will not volunteer information or attempt to educate her patient.

Strengths- knowledgeable, kind, informative Weakness- It’s a lot to ask but I wish she understood a bit better how to relate to a 40-something very pro-life, patient. Some words are very triggering like “Viable fetus” or “products of conception”. A simple study of semantics could help patients process difficult news a bit better. Again, no judgment here, just a suggestion...She’s awesome!

Listen to her advice, she’s a professional who cares.

After a fertility test, she recommended fibroid surgery. After surgery, she did further tests and recommended polyp removal. Each surgery has improved my quality of life greatly! No baby yet. We plan to continue surgeries and IVF after Covid-19 dies down.

The costs are minimal, we have good insurance. The fertility stuff isn’t covered so we are preparing for that big financial hit.

No comments

Dr. Keller was very nice & compassionate. I had a traumatic experience with her just because I was not expecting my only options would be egg donor or adoption. She also is very one track minded. I’ve had ulcerative colitis for years which she did not correlate to effecting my fertility which is mostly definitely has been the cause of my infertility. I would like to see her take a more holistic approach & study the causes of infertility more.

She’s very kind but very regimented.

We did one round of clomid & I developed a cyst so we stopped it. She told me we could try clomid for another 6 months but it was very unlikely I would get pregnant on my own. I was not a candidate for IVF as my fsh was too high so my only two options going forward was egg donor or adoption.

I did not get to this part. My consultation fee was not too high.

Did not get this far.

The clinic needed to run smoother, dont forget about your patients. Offer a second opinion at no cost would be great or if they brought in another doctors opinion. I felt like I was up a creek with no paddle. It was just like ivf was my only choice. I had a small amount of endo on my laparoscopy with hsg showed blockage on one tube then and 2 hsg test showed normal tubes. Uterine biopsy was neg. I am at a loss and our marriage has suffered due to money.

Get straight answers to your whys.

Clomid 100mg with time sex. Femara treatments with iui and without. One hsg shot

Iui was around 380 and went up to 580. Ivf was around 16,000 to 25,000 I was told