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Sue and Mark's Story My husband and I have been together for 16 years and married for 12 years. We had decided not to have children right away so we could travel and be financially secure. When we talked about having children, we talked mainly about having only one of our own, and explored the possibility of adoption if we decided that we wanted more than one child. I had a daughter when I was 17 years old, and everyone thought we would have no problems when we decided the time was right for us to have our own. Little did we know they would be wrong. In 1998 we had decided to start our family and I went off birth control. Within the next 18 months I started having fewer periods. I went and saw my primary care physician and tried several things over the next 6 months. Still no luck. My girlfriend suggested I go see Dr. Schoolcraft who had just helped her to become pregnant. At this point we were ready to explore other options. In February 2001 we called Dr. Schoolcraft’s office and got a consultation with Dr. Surrey. He suggested some initial testing to identify potential problems. My diagnosis was “unexplained secondary infertility”. The only thing they found was a small cyst on my right ovary. He said we would have to watch this and see if it becomes bigger. At this time I was feeling pretty down and wondered if we would ever have a baby. But Dr. Surrey reassured me that he would do everything he can to make this happen. I felt so much better leaving his office. What a wonderful doctor he is. My next two hurdles became removing the cyst in September and in December finding out that I had developed hypothyroidism. I had to get on medicine and regulate my thyroid before we could move forward. It’s so amazing how the months just kept on going by. God sure knows how to test your patience. By July 2002 I was finally healthy and ready to start Clomid. I soon found out that this would not work for me. I was producing too many eggs to allow a safe insemination procedure. When we tried lowering my clomid dosage, the eggs would all stop growing. After this seemingly endless string of disappointments, my husband I went back to visit with Dr. Surrey. He and his staff were so supportive. I can’t express enough how they all go out of their way to help with the emotional and physical aspects of this process. He talked to us about IVF and a possibility that we could qualify for a research study. The study was ground breaking at the time, because they were allowing the embryo to develop two extra days to become a blastocyst before implantation. One of the things they were trying to determine was if women implanted with one blast had the same chance to get pregnant as the women who had two blasts implanted. The computer would make the choice, between one and two, for us if and when the time came. After our meeting with Dr. Surrey we went home to discuss all of our options. We made the decision to try IVF. We also qualified for the study. Sue and Mark |