I am posting this for a friend who is seeking IVF treatment. She has already had 1 round, but it failed. They then discovered she has a fibroid tumor located on the outside of her uterus about the size of a 4 month pregnancy. They think this may have been the cause of the first treatment not working. She has received conflicting advice from her fertility Dr. and her OB/GYN. One says to have surgery before trying IVF again, the other says not to because of scarring and to try the IVF with the tumor still intact. Does ANYONE have any experience with this? She really needs some advice and possibly other Doctor referrals. Is there a natural approach to shrinking the tumors (possibly through diet???) Any advice would be wonderful at this point. Thank you in advance.
I have had these tumors all of my adult life. May I sugest a raw vegan diet. I also had a myomectomy (removal of the tumors with uterus left intact) The myomectomy will get rid of the tumors, but they could return. This is why I recommend the raw diet. Try RAWVOLUTION. com. They will even deliver the meals to you. No matterwhat they say about it not being our diets, we ARE what we eat.
Good luck.
Shelley
I don't have those issues but I have others, and I have loved Dr. Najmabadi in BH as well (someone else posted his name here as well). He also has a Burbank office if that is closer to your friend. He and his staff are so nice and caring and the doc goes through all of your options really carefully. He seems to have a lot of happy patients which is always a good sign. I am going thru my first round of IVF now so fingers crossed.
We highly recommend Dr Rosen for IVF treatments. He's a very patient, sweet doctor who hasa lot of good advice.
Dr. Mark Surrey is the best in the city in my opinion. They are located in Beverly Hills on Roxbury. I used him twice and was successful on the first time with both babies (both using IVF). Both times I needed surgery unfortunately but it worked! Good luck! The consultation is worth just looking him up.
Sadly I am in the exact same situation. She falls into a grey area where she will find conflicting information. This fibroid COULD BE affecting the quality of her lining and the babies won't attach. We are probably going to surrogacy since we don't want to do a surgery that MIGHT correct the problem. There is no clear answer here and many doctors just want to remove it since it's a factor that can't be ignored. There is nothing that can be done to shrink fibroids - people say there is but after 5 years of trying to become a mom nothing has worked. We've done 7 IVF's. If I had it to do over I would have done the surgery in the beginning just to rule it out. Now we are emotionally drained, physically tired, and can't wait for something else not to work. But this is us, maybe mentally she is not there yet, in which case she should probably do it in my opinion. There is nothing worse than doing for years without success. Not sure if this helps or not.
I was in EXACTLY your friend's situation ~2 years ago. In fact I went to see Dr. Surrey who was recommended by so many other posters. He said I should get the fibroid out before attempting IVF - not that IVF might not work even with the fibroid, but it reduces the odds and IVF is expensive and time consuming (tick-tock tick-tock!)so he thought I would be better off removing it. After considering several other options, I had a myomectomy done by my regular (totally fabulous) OB/GYN, Dr. Margaret Bates (at Good Sam, downtown - the location is a drag, but for the best, I recommend the drive.) She recommended a traditional surgical approach because that way she could be the most cautious about not affecting the uterus. Also, as a bonus, she could look around and see what else was going on in there, tested my tubes, etc. Thank goodness she did, because while she was in there she found some endometriosus(sp?)and a cyst, all of which she was able to clean out during the same surgery. One month later - you guessed it - I was pregnant - without IVF. And now I have a beautiful 16 month old baby boy!
Not sure this is exactly the same situation but I had a polyp on my utereus which interfered with getting pregnant. Both my OB and my fertility doctor recommended getting it out and it was successful in helping me get pregnant with one IVF cycle. You should encourage your friend to get some additional opinions - there are tons of great fertility and OBs in the LA area. My OB is Dr. Sheryl Ross in SM and the fertility doctor I used was Dr. Najmabadi in Bev Hills - both are great and would be good second opinions.
