Moving on...

On Tuesday, I took action to part ways with my previous RE.

Since our main method of ongoing communication has been e-mail, and I wanted to share my latest u/s scan with her, I sent her the following (ccing both nurses):

"Eve,
We are eager to get pregnant (as you know) and are thus looking into IVF with another clinic. Imagine my surprise when my 3-D u/s yesterday showed an enormous septum...(26mm was their measure, pic attached) This will set us back another several months as I get another resection, balloon, post-op estrogen, etc. So I am cancelling the lap I had scheduled w/you and Dr. Tu. I hope you understand. I've enjoyed working with you. Best, Kate"

The first response was from my 1st nurse (not my fave, and I think she thought she was responding to the Dr.)
"WOW, however Vita did note a small residual septum on 4/6/10 u/s."

Then she replied again:
Katherine,
Sorry to hear that...if you received my email, a small residual was noted as stated in your records.
All the best to you, S

Then I heard back from the Dr...

"Kate-
Please feel free to share the following with your new physicians.

Your initial MRI showed that your septum only had a 1.5cm fibrous component to it. The rest of the septum was muscular. At the time of our initial surgery, I resected the fibrous portion of the septum and stopped resecting when I encountered vascular/muscular tissue. Your follow up saline ultrasound showed 1.5cm of residual septum in the cavity. As you may recall, we had discussed attempting to resect more septum hysterscopically at the time of the laparoscopy, though I was not optimistic that we would be able to get much more because of the vascular nature of the septum. The image you have emailed shows the measurement of the septum from the top of the entire uterus and not just from the top of the endometrial cavity, so the 2.5cm is exaggerated.

I would be happy to discuss further with you via phone. EF"

As my new RE pointed out, it comes down to competence, experience, and equipment. FCI hasn't invested in 3-D u/s machines (he had a lot of other choice things to say about them). This is why she had to send me to the hospital in December to get a $3K MRI and my follow-up HSG didn't give a good picture of the septum that remained. And she still doesn't seem interested/able to remove my significant remaining vascular septum, which would impede the success of any pregnancy.

In the meantime, I called her office to cancel my next appt. (for my follow-up culture) and the lap on the 9th and to request the rest of my records be sent to me. S will get all of his upcoming tests done with our new clinic.

I also called my endo surgeon to cancel my pre-op on the 27th and him for the lap. The woman I spoke with was kind of short w/me, but he was very kind and called me back and left a nice msg. He said he had talked to Dr. F, but sounded a little confused as to what exactly had gone on.

I also called my new clinic to get a consult with the other RE in that practice who does all the surgery. We are now set up for next Monday, the 26th, for the consult when hopefully I'll be ready to get my CD3 blood work done as well. He only does surgery on Wednesdays, but the nurse told me it won't take too long to get on his schedule, when I asked. Of course, this will be driven by my cycle and our vacation (which was scheduled around our previous lap).

From my new surgeon's bio on advancedfertility.com

'I understand the stress of infertility'

Dr. Deutch has personally experienced the ups and downs associated with infertility treatment. "I think it's important to talk about the stress that infertility puts on a relationship," he says. "I'm not a psychiatrist, but I think it helps to get those issues out in the open and to let patients know there are options to talk to people if they are interested."

"Infertility is such a difficult problem from a psychological standpoint, especially for women," he adds. "A lot of women with infertility feel they're not living up to their full potential. Helping patients work through that is very rewarding."

Dr. Deutch and his wife are the proud parents of twins - a boy and a girl that were born in January 2009. "They're really adorable," he says, adding, "Obviously, I'm a little biased. My patients were very excited when the twins were born. It was very nice."

I like this guy already...