Friday, September 26, 2008

Dr 'Speed'

Dr 'Speed' has a regular OBGYN practice, but here at the clinic he's also the expert 'echographiste', i.e. ultrasound expert. I'm slowly getting used to his way of working, but he can still make me feel completely rattled.

He is always late. Most of the time around 15 minutes, but sometimes half an hour, and one time even 45 minutes, which made all of us women with full bladders in the waiting room feeling like we were going to explode any minute.

When he's finally there, you get the impression he tries to make up for his lateness by speeding us all through the ultrasound exams in no-time. If, heaven forbid, your bladder is either too full or not full enough (so he can't see your ovaries on the ultrasound), he'll send you back to the end of the line (which is a real bummer if you initially were second in line, and suddenly you're nr. 10), no mercy. He sees the follicles on the ultrasound, measures the biggest and then is able to write down the size of the rest as well. It seems to be pretty accurate... Before you have time to pull up your pants, he already opens the door to summon the next patient in.

Last year, when I had to come in for my IUI cycles, he somehow realized he was making me very nervous, so he started making jokes to make me feel a bit more at ease. Which helped, more or less.

However, last Wednesday he got me completely confused. While doing the ultrasound he said something like "it's Friday", so I reacted surprised. "Yes, yes, because we'll skip two days... - if you're OK with it" which made me think that he was talking about the time between triggering and egg collection, which confused me even more, because he had just measured the largest follicle being at 13mm, so not big enough at all to trigger ovulation. I already started to panic that I hadn't brought my Ovitrelle, so I mentioned that to him. "No, no, you don't need that". So I told him I was now very confused. "You just take 125 IU of Puregon tonight and come back tomorrow. Au revoir, Madame". Ugh.

That night I had a nightmare: Dr 'Speed' had forgotten to tell me how many IU of Puregon to take, so I asked my own doctor, who told me 500! Which freaked me out, because it was way to much, but no, no, it was necessary, because my follicles were not growing quickly enough... Luckily I woke up at that moment.

The next day I wanted to ask Dr 'Speed' about some abdominal pain I was experiencing, but again, the whole thing went so fast, and then he got a call on his cell phone, and walked out of the room... Before he got the call he'd made a note for the doctor who would do the ultrasound on Saturday, to say that maybe we'd trigger on Sunday, and had written down how much Puregon to take that evening, but had not given any instructions for Friday, which I needed since there would be no ultrasounds that day. The whole thing started to ressemble my nightmare a bit too much...

While the doctor was on the phone, I told the nurse about it all. He's great and we had a good laugh. Finally Dr Speed was done with his phone call. So the nurse asked him about the instructions for Friday 'for this woman who's triggering on Sunday'. "No, that's not what I said, I said MAYBE trigger on Sunday, that's up to the other doctor who'll do the ultrasound on Saturday!" So he added four more question marks to his note, gave the instructions for Friday and off he was.

Before I left, the nurse told me that if I would wake up screaming that night from another nightmare, I should think of him, because he was probably having one too!

2 comments:

Baby Smiling In Back Seat said...

Here from Creme de la Creme...

I'd like to think that the confusion all resulted from the language difference, but I'm sure that all of the other patients have a similar experience of Dr. Speed, and language has little or nothing to do with it. My current RE, Dr. Full Speed Ahead, is a "fast-talker" so people who don't come very prepared or who don't stand up for themselves find that they are whisked out the door having agreed to all sorts of surprising things. I know one couple who went in for a consultation to get an initial opinion and walked out the door saying to each other, "Did we just agree to do IVF?" "I think so, but "I'm not sure."

Burkey0906 said...

Having just started reading your blog I thought I'd better start from the beginning but felt I had to comment on this post. I feel really stressed having just read it so I can only imagine how you must have felt...deary me!! I would need to be prescribed valium aswell as everything else..good for you for hanging in there with Dr 'Speed'!