Monday, May 24, 2010

WTF Appt Questions?

Thanks for the warm welcome back to the blog world. I sure missed you all.

There were some good suggestions in your comments. Made me realize I need the blog community's help coming up with new questions for Dr. W for our WTF appointment, especially given IVF #1 resulted in a chemical pregnancy with the fresh round and an ectopic for the frozen.

Heading into IVF #2, Stacey suggested I look into recurrent pregnancy loss panels. What are included in those? What other tests should I request?
What other questions should I ask?

Gosh, I remember going to my first RE appointment, way back when and being shocked when I was treated as the patient. "But, it's Mr Jem's swimmers, not me!!" How naive I was!

I sure appreciate any input/suggestions you can give me!

Thanks,

Jem

6 comments:

Heather said...

Do you have endo? If so you might want to consider immunology testing. SIRM's website is pretty thorough on the topic (www.haveababy.com). Most doctors think there is no connection though, so yours might not embrace the suggestion. I think a few of those overlap the RPL panel.

Just a thought...

Stacie said...

Blood Tests:
1) Lupus Anticoagulant Antibodies
2) Anticardiolipin Antibodies
3) PT and aPTT
4) MTHFR Gene Mutation
5) Protein C, Factor V Leiden, Protein S deficiency, Prothrombin gene mutation and Antithrombin III deficiency
6) Thyroid Panel
7) Progesterone
8) Karyotyping of the Parents

If I remember correctly, they took 9-10 vials of blood from me, and 2 vials from my husband. The karyotyping took the longest, but the rest were back relatively fast.

M/c #1 risk is about 15%; M/c #2 is up to 17%. Once you've had 2 consecutive m/cs the risk jumps to 40-50% according to one site I saw a million years ago. That pushed me to demand testing after 2 m/cs. Thank goodness we did. We found for me that I am borderline Protein C deficient and have the compound heterozygous MTHFR mutations.

Oh, and insurance covered it, so yours should, too!

Hope this helps!

Stacie said...

Whoops, I'm not protein c defient - I am protein S deficient. Not that it matters I guess. I still get to enjoy Lovenox either way...

Jenni said...

I don't have test suggestions, but I wanted to say that I resemble your "But, it's Mr Jem's swimmers, not me!!" remark.

I hope that your appointment goes well.

Nicole said...

Goodness, I have had some WTF appts but I can't think of what the good questions were. At both of them we were kind of "combative" and challenging our doc about whether or not it would ever work and why in the world should we believe you and try again. Not a happy or good place to be emotionally.
Ask what SPECIFICALLY he thinks went wrong, if he thinks they were one time problems or recurrent, and how he plans to overcome those issues and why exactly that plan will work. Ask for several treatment options/variations.
And ask for a discount on future tx :)
Hope it goes well!

Anonymous said...

Good suggestions here. I'm wishing you the best for a good appointment. Can't wait to read the update.