Day 1

Dr. Gordon’s days usu­ally start rather early, at 7:30am. Many of his patients stop by before they head to work so morn­ings are quite busy at Domin­ion Fer­til­ity. I saw Dr. Gor­don do a lot of patient mon­i­tor­ing with ultra­sounds. Most times the ultra­sound was used to check on the qual­ity and num­ber of eggs avail­able. They were also used to check that every­thing looked nor­mal before treat­ment could be started, and sev­eral times I was able to see babies on the mon­i­tor. When the baby has reached a cer­tain num­ber of weeks and a heart­beat can be detected, the patient is sent back to her nor­mal OBGYN with hopes for a healthy, suc­cess­ful preg­nancy. At lunchtime we went to INOVA Fair­fax Hos­pi­tal, where Dr. Gor­don spoke to res­i­dent OBGYN appli­cants about the great facil­i­ties avail­able there. In the after­noon Dr. Gor­don did more mon­i­tor­ing, along with patient con­sul­ta­tions to dis­cuss their future treat­ment. I was also able to see a hys­teros­alp­in­gogram – an x-ray exam that uses flu­o­res­cent dye to image the uterus and fal­lop­ian tubes in order to detect scar­ring – at a hospital.

Day 2

In the morn­ing I went with Dr. Gor­don to INOVA Fair­fax, where he gave a talk to res­i­dents on repro­duc­tive endocrinol­ogy and infer­til­ity. Then we went to the hospital’s busi­ness meet­ing, where admin­is­tra­tors talked about sta­tis­tics on patient sat­is­fac­tion and plans for improv­ing the hos­pi­tal. I sat in on some more patient con­sults. We went to an OBGYN office in Reston where Dr. Gor­don some­times sees a small num­ber of patients for con­sults, but does not actu­ally per­form any treat­ment. I was also able to see a nat­ural cycle IVF egg col­lec­tion. The embry­ol­o­gist showed me the egg once he had found it in the frac­tions. In the after­noon a very grate­ful patient of Dr. Gordon’s came in with cook­ies to cel­e­brate her daughter’s first birthday.

Day 3

Dr. Gor­don again did patient mon­i­tor­ing and con­sults to dis­cuss a plan of action. We spent some time in the new office in Fair­fax, which just opened at the end of last year. At the main office I was able to see an IUI and two more egg retrievals. Both patients were doing nat­ural cycle IVF, and unfor­tu­nately the egg could not be found for one woman.

One of the most attrac­tive things about work­ing in repro­duc­tive endocrinol­ogy is that you really get to know your patients. Since women come in often for mon­i­tor­ing you are always aware of what is going on with them. With just three days at Domin­ion Fer­til­ity I started to rec­og­nize some of the women and knew when a cer­tain test proved encour­ag­ing or dis­cour­ag­ing. This Princetern­ship was so much more than I expected. I learned about life as a res­i­dent (mostly as an OBGYN res­i­dent), hos­pi­tal admin­is­tra­tion, and infer­til­ity treat­ment. I saw elated women that were so happy to be preg­nant, and I saw dis­ap­pointed women whose treat­ment did not work out. I am so thank­ful that I had the oppor­tu­nity to spend this time with Dr. Gordon.