My three days at Domin­ion Fer­til­ity with Dr. John Gor­don have been a won­der­ful for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence for me.  I stayed in my brother’s dorm at George­town Uni­ver­sity, and although I was orig­i­nally plan­ning to take the bus, Dr. Gor­don gen­er­ously offered to pick me up and drop me off on his way to and from the clinic.  My goal for this Princetern­ship was to learn more about the every­day work of a physi­cian and fur­ther con­sider whether or not I want to con­tinue on the pre-medicine track.  After shad­ow­ing Dr. Gor­don these three days, I know that I would enjoy being a doc­tor, and I now feel con­fi­dent mov­ing for­ward in my study of med­i­cine.  I also have a more objec­tive view of the pros and cons both of work­ing as a doc­tor and of hav­ing a pri­vate practice.

Each morn­ing of my Princetern­ship, Dr. Gor­don picked me up from George­town at 7:15 am, and we headed over to the Arling­ton office.  On my first day at Domin­ion Fer­til­ity, I felt well pre­pared because I had read the three books that he had mailed me a few weeks before, but I was still a lit­tle lost as he dis­cussed the dif­fer­ent types of treat­ments that are offered at his prac­tice.  He explained the sched­ule for the next few days, and when we got to the office, he intro­duced me to the other doc­tors, nurses, and staff.  Every­one was friendly and wel­com­ing, and I soon adjusted to the pace and rhythm of the office.  Morn­ings were spent doing vagi­nal ultra­sounds to mon­i­tor the sta­tus of grow­ing eggs or check for var­i­ous prob­lems, after which I shad­owed either the embry­ol­o­gists or Dr. Gor­don dur­ing egg retrievals or embryo trans­fers.  At first, I had dif­fi­culty under­stand­ing what was actu­ally hap­pen­ing on the ultra­sound screen, but I was excited by how quickly I began to under­stand what was going on and even pre­dict what Dr. Gor­don would deter­mine from the screens.  In the after­noons, he often had con­sul­ta­tions with new or cur­rent patients to dis­cuss treat­ment options, and I real­ized that much of his work also involves coun­sel­ing, edu­cat­ing, and pro­vid­ing emo­tional support.

Dur­ing the day, we also drove to dif­fer­ent loca­tions to see patients, visit with other doc­tors, and for Dr. Gor­don to give a lec­ture to med­ical stu­dents.  We ran a few errands along the way, and although he joked that I would report spend­ing my Princetern­ship at Home Depot and Gui­tar World, I actu­ally appre­ci­ated see­ing the doctor’s every­day life.  I real­ized that in pri­vate prac­tice, a physi­cian has more flex­i­bil­ity in his or her sched­ule, but, as Dr. Gor­don pointed out, the doc­tor also becomes a small busi­ness owner.  I noticed that he did spend a fair amount of time man­ag­ing the busi­ness and con­sid­er­ing ways to make the prac­tice more effi­cient and cost-effective.  Being some­what inde­pen­dent also gave Dr. Gor­don the flex­i­bil­ity to teach and do research, includ­ing writ­ing sev­eral suc­cess­ful books, which I feel pro­vides stim­u­lat­ing and reward­ing diver­sity to his job.

Charles and Dr. Gordon

As for the spe­cialty of repro­duc­tive endocrinol­ogy, I learned an incred­i­ble amount about the com­plex facets of this new and devel­op­ing field.  Although I am still far from choos­ing a spe­cific field within med­i­cine, I found infer­til­ity treat­ment to be chal­leng­ing intel­lec­tu­ally and reward­ing emo­tion­ally.  Repro­duc­tive endocrinol­ogy is an extremely unique spe­cialty that still faces much con­tro­versy and is not fully under­stood, but when suc­cess­ful, the results are unde­ni­able.  As Dr. Gor­don likes to say, “once you’re preg­nant, you’re 100% preg­nant.”  There is noth­ing more sat­is­fy­ing for an infer­til­ity doc­tor than to have a patient come in with a happy, healthy baby.  On the flip side, repro­duc­tive endocri­nol­o­gists face tough eth­i­cal dilem­mas on a daily basis.  For exam­ple, one morn­ing a cou­ple came in for embryo trans­fer, and Dr. Gor­don informed them that four healthy embryos had been pro­duced dur­ing the in vitro fer­til­iza­tion.  Since the cou­ple only wanted to use one, he asked if they would like to freeze the remain­ing three for future use.  The wife asked to have them dis­posed of, but the hus­band wanted to save them in case they changed their minds.  This sit­u­a­tion raises many fas­ci­nat­ing but unan­swer­able ques­tions.  Is an embryo a human being?  What is its legal sta­tus?  Who has cus­tody of the embryo?  What if a woman has no more eggs but has frozen embryos from a pre­vi­ous mar­riage that she wants to use, but the ex-husband dis­agrees?  Should gen­der selec­tion or other genetic test­ing be allowed for purely aes­thetic rea­sons?  These and other ques­tions make the daily work of a repro­duc­tive endocri­nol­o­gist chal­leng­ing and stimulating.

I am so thank­ful to Dr. Gor­don for allow­ing me to shadow him and shar­ing his expe­ri­ences with me.  It was won­der­ful to meet an alum­nus with such enthu­si­asm and school spirit, and see­ing some­one who has advanced to the point where I hope to be in twenty or thirty years has made me feel so much more com­fort­able and con­fi­dent in my plans for the future.