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Infertility

Our Infertility Support forum is a space to connect with others in the same position, discuss causes, treatment and IVF, and share infertility stories of hope and success.

Lister at the Portland / CRGH / ARGC

5 replies

strtng · 28/07/2024 14:52

Anyone used any of these clinics - views?

OP posts:
Tigerlilies82 · 29/07/2024 12:23

Not Lister at Portland but we used Lister at Chelsea. Not sure if same consultants working at both but we were generally very happy with our consultant and the staff overall. Happy to provide more details if there's anything specific you want to know.

strtng · 29/07/2024 12:31

@Tigerlilies82 mainly how were the doctors and nurses.

I'm at lister at the Portland at the moment and (maybe this is just my experience!) it seems really really difficult to get hold of the doctors in the sense of getting a call or an email back during treatment and the nurses seem a bit... incompetent.
Plenty of examples but a few that stand out: 1) we're talking to a nurse about our first round of IVF at the coordination appointment. The nurse says there's a 50/50 chance of success. We ask what she means by success (BFP? Making it to 12 weeks? Live birth?) and if that's age specific or general population, she says she's not sure on either. So a 50/50 chance of something but we don't know what. 2) asking for a letter to be written that explains to an airline why we are carrying medicine and needles in our luggage, agreed date when we will pick it up, called 3 times in advance saying we'll come please do it. Nothing done.

MAYBE we've just been unlucky and maybe that's just our experience. But after an unsuccessful first round im wondering whether to stick with it or change clinics.

OP posts:
Tigerlilies82 · 29/07/2024 12:45

So I hear what you're saying on responsiveness - that drove me crazy too, my second round of IVF (FET) was covered by health insurance and getting the correct letters from them for the insurer involved at least twenty calls/emails, not ideal when we had been advised by the consultant to start treatment asap. Our consultant was very detailed (like you I wanted to know exact odds of a successful live birth and what factors influenced this and he was great, very direct and no sugarcoating things, also explained the protocol and why he chose it). But we only saw him for the initial consultation and then not again until egg collection, similar for our second IVF two years later, had one video call and then he did the FET. Nurses were hit and miss, some amazing, others not as good but they were always very responsive on the group email for any issues during treatment so no complaints overall. In the end, we were very lucky and our first transfer and the later FET worked. If you're not happy with the consultant and the amount of information you're getting I would consider either changing consultants or changing clinics.

strtng · 30/07/2024 07:25

@Tigerlilies82 that's good that they explained the protocol, is this a normal part of the procedure?
Our protocol was never explained to us, we were just told "you're taking X Y and Z in these amounts", not why we are. I assumed that's because I have no clue about the medicines anyway and wouldn't be able to have any input as to whether the protocol is correct or not.

One thing that I do want to ask at my follow up consultation after this unsuccessful round (no euploid embryos out of 13 eggs collected, 8 mature, I'm 29 with AMH 13), is whether he plans to change the protocol and if so, how. The problem is - I don't know what answer I'm looking for and how I'd know it'll change things for the better? So, say he tells me "we'll give you a stronger dose of X and reply drug Y with drug A because it'll hopefully make more eggs mature" - he could be absolutely correct in that it'll lead to better results, or he could be completely making things up just so that I stay as a patient and pay another £10-15K / he may not know whether that's the right decision and just making things up to avoid losing me as a patient.
How would you know these things?
How did your doc explain why he used the protocol he used?

OP posts:
Tigerlilies82 · 30/07/2024 10:04

So my situation is quite different to yours - 41 at the time of the first round and low AMH but otherwise no fertility issues on either side other than my age. The doctor basically explained that for us it was about getting the 'one good egg' from a low egg reserve/likely not many good eggs left due to age, so did a very very strong dose on the first round to maximise number of eggs collected, and he recommended ICSI even though DH has no issues just to throw everything at it as we didn't have time to waste given my age. We ended up with 13 eggs collected, 5 fertilised and 3 made it to 5 day blasts. Of those 2 were euploid. We discussed doing embryo banking (which would have made more money for the clinic) but the doctor recommended just trying a fresh transfer first, and again when it came to the sibling round two years later we wanted to do a fresh round of IVF to maximise chances if our one remaining frozen embryo didn't work but he recommended against it saying the chances of success after another round at my age are so low vs the relative high chance of the FET working that we should do the FET first, so I didn't feel they were pushing for needless treatment.

In your case I would definitely ask them to explain the possible causes of no euploid embryos (as seems quite unusual based on your age/AMH?), ask whether different protocols might change the result etc and probably take a note of what they say then get a second opinion from a different doctor/clinic before doing another round.

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