Those Who Assist Us With Our Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Thurs)

(Start with "Monday" if you can. I think, as the week progresses and I get more and more exhausted, it's fascinating to witness my mental unraveling first hand. Come. Watch me deteriorate.) So what were we talking about? Oh right. What each medical professional's role is at the fertility clinic. I like anesthesiologists myself. Just by their title you know immediately what they do there.

My anesthesiologist was a lovely Italian gentleman. (Now that I think about it, I wonder if that might have been my under-anesthesia hallucination fantasy. Maybe things got distorted in my head during the countdown. Somewhere between 98, and 97.

Maybe my anesthesiologist wasn't a lovely gentleman from Italy at all. Maybe she was just a woman wearing boots.) 

Anyway, so this handsome Italian Stallion anesthesiologist dude was at my egg retrieval. This is an ideal job for a shy person: Someone of few words. "You're going to count back from 100. 100, 99, 98............................................................"

He may as well have said: "You're going to count back from "1"...

You've got to respect a guy who can lull you into unconsciousness. Of course he has the benefit of having drugs and a needle to help the process along. I had a college professor who did it with nothing but the monotone of his voice. Now that's magic.   

Reproductive Endocrinologists interest me a lot also. I mean, they're the head honchos of these joints, aren't they? I think we patients look at them as the ones who really orchestrate our entire conception course of action and, rightly so or not, are somewhat responsible for our successes and failures.

So what are their qualifications? For me, I have a few vital criteria when choosing an RE:  

1) Have warm hands 2) Don't mention either my abdominal roll nor the odd-looking mole on my leg.

I've always lived in dread of getting that one doctor who feels compelled to say:

"You have to have that mole removed before I can treat you. No, the mole won't hurt your chances of getting pregnant. It's just really ugly and I refuse to go near it."  And then, he or she wouldn't stop there.

"It makes me so mad when patients assume we're immune to gross things just because we're specialists. You people just think 'we've seen it all', don't you? Well, I've never seen anything like that mole before and I refuse to have anything to do with it! So get rid of it, young lady, or find yourself a different doctor!"

Of course I would focus on the fact that he or she referred to me as "young lady" and know this was the doctor for me. 

So according to, this is the background an RE has:



I feel much better knowing all that don't you? I've always had this deep-seated fear that I was going to find out my Reproductive Endocrinologist graduated from Apex Tech.

He figured: "I think I'll be one of those Repro doctors. I mean, I'm good with my hands and my certificate is in 'plumbing'." Then one day he'd quit it all when he found out he could make more money fixing toilets.

Listen, I gotta go. I have to fast starting tomorrow night, and I don't want to wait until the last minute to stuff myself  silly. I'll talk with ya again tomorrow. Don't forget to check out Embryologist Carole Wegner's article "Quality Assurance in the Fertility Lab" on The Health Experts page: