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My name is Denise and my husband’s name is Scot. Four years ago, we met in Rio de Janeiro, where I am from originally. Since my husband has cystic fibrosis, we knew it would be difficult for us to have any children naturally, if we were to get married. Despite this, we were married three and a half years ago. When it came the time to make a decision about having a baby, we struggled with the choice of trying IVF or adoption. Initially, our decision was the adoption route, but at the last minute, I had a change of heart. I told my husband I really thought we should try IVF or else we would never know if we would have been able to have a child of our own. At the time, I was 37 years old, adding to our difficulties. Once we committed to trying IVF, we met with Dr. Silber and his staff to begin the process. We endured the whole process of the medication regime, injection schedules, and the anxiety that accompanies it all.
When our retrieval date arrived, not only were we very nervous, but we ran into more problems. Dr. Silber discovered my husband had a congenital defect, making the sperm retrieval difficult. After some searching, he was able to retrieve two sperm from my husband. From me, they were able to retrieve only two eggs. After fertilization, we learned that we only had one viable embryo to implant. Despite our low odds, I never gave up hope.
My mom in Brazil would keep telling me that everything was going well and she knew for certain that I would get pregnant. I truly believed in what she told me. I can not describe the feeling of joy I had when I was told by Dena that I was pregnant. Even now, writing our story brings many, many tears to my eyes. It is a blessing to be able to look at our beautiful, healthy daughter Giovanna everyday and I encourage anyone to try because it is the most wonderful feeling one can have. We are so grateful to Dr. Silber and his staff for helping us start our family.
Infertile patients cannot afford to wait for treatment while their eggs get older.
Dr. Sherman Silber, Infertility Center of St. Louis, is offering video consultations for patients who need to plan now for their treatment while stay-at-home orders are in place. He is talking to and evaluating patients in their home to comply with social distancing measures.
Dr. Silber is discovering that patients actually prefer this method of telemedicine consultation over the conventional office visit. Patients have conveyed that “it is so much more convenient and less stressful” to have a telemedicine personal consultation than to take a day off from work to travel to the doctor’s office and sit with other nervous patients in the waiting room.
The COVID-19 pandemic is thus changing much of the way we will do things in the future, and for the better. “Our patients are surprisingly much happier with this approach. Of course, at some point we need to perform hands on treatment. But with this new manner of seeing patients, we can come to the right diagnosis and treatment plan for most patients more efficiently, quickly, and painlessly, with no loss of personal one-on-one communication.” This is a very welcome new era of telemedicine that has been forced on us by the current difficult times.
