Finding The Right Doctor

Having no success in conceiving naturally for about 4 years, I knew that I was going to need medical intervention to have my baby. I was prepared to undergo IVF at the last resort. That meant looking for a fertility specialist. So I was thrilled when I found a prominent specialist at a hospital just half a mile from my home. Yippee! 

She was possibly the WORST doctor I ever had! I had not been formally diagnosed as to what was causing my infertility and the least I expected from her was a fertility work-up to see what problems I had, or perhaps my husband had. But instead, she suggested a laparoscopy straight away without explaining anything or offering other options. And all throughout the few words that she spoke, she was opening and going through her mail. How f**king rude is that? My husband & I left still feeling clueless and extremely disappointed, not to mention pissed and a few hundred dollars poorer. 

We thought perhaps that she was having an off day, and decided to give her another chance. Our subsequent appointment wasn't any better. She, which I will refer to as Dr.Crap, was still as cold as a fish, never bothered to explain things to us and absolutely did not show any genuine concern in helping us. Our relationship with her lasted only 3 visits, out of which we managed to get a basic hormone work-up and semen analysis, which was conducted only because I requested for it. Which was a good thing because she was just useless. At least we found out that my DH was also a factor, in addition to my problems.We were so put off by her that after our 3rd appointment, we decided never to go back to Dr.Crap again. We were pretty much back at square one again-with NO doctor and NO baby. 

By that time, I was pretty sure that I wanted to give TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) a try because western medicine had done absolutely nothing for us thus far. I had read Randine Lewis' book (The Infertility Cure) about treating infertility with TCM a year back and was inspired to try it, but did not get anywhere because we didn't know any good TCM doctors. Most of my friends who had infertility problems never went down that route. So we were really lost. 

One day, a friend told us that she had found a TCM doctor on the internet. I checked out the website and his credentials sounded really good. Too good to be true infact! Alarm bells immediately started ringing off in my head, thinking that this could be a bogus doctor! You can't just believe everything you read on the internet these days! And no way was I going to put my life and my future baby's life in the hands of a doctor I randomly found on the internet! That was just too crazy! But then - that's exactly what I did!!!

After the last visit to Dr.Crap, we were at wits end as to what to do. As soon as we left her clinic, we decided to check this internet doctor out. Besides his clinic wasn't far and we were only planing to pop-in to see if this was a legit practice. When we walked in, we were greeted by a muslim receptionist. I was shocked. It wasn't a typical chinese practice like I expected. And I was shocked by the diversity in the patients that seemed to have come from all ethnic races. After interrogating the receptionist for a while, she suggested we see the doctor since he was available then. So we decided, "Oh! What the hell! We might as well!"  My first impression was - "Great! This chinese doctor can speak English well!" That was such an important criteria for me because I had to be able to understand and communicate with my doctor! Well, one thing led to another, and before we knew it, we had completed one acupuncture session and was prescribed herbal medicine by the end of that first appointment! There was no turning back at that point. To me, we were finally taking steps towards resolving my endo and our infertility, and I was determined to stick around to see if this was at last the solution I've been desperately looking for...

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UPDATE:

We've seen 3 TCM doctors to date. I got pregnant within 3 months of seeing my first TCM doc. But it ended in a miscarriage. After a total of about a year and a half and no successful pregnancy to show for, we moved on to a second TCM doctor specializing in infertility. I couldn't take the pain, and well, that only lasted a few sessions. Now we're with our third TCM doctor, also specializing in infertility. I hope the third one's the charm!