During my training, when I was a resident in OB/Gyn, before I subspecialized in REI, it was pretty much the norm for me to spend a few days per week at the hospital during 1 AM, delivering babies and handling the OB/Gyn cases that came through the ER. Ever since I shifted to doing infertility only, I have had to be in the hospital at 1AM only once or twice in 10+ years and those were for ectopic surgeries. That all changed last week.

A RE colleague of mine was going out of town to accompany his daughter for her first week of college this year. It just so happened that his partner was out of town also and he had three egg retrievals that were scheduled to go on the days he was gone, so I was asked to pinch hit. This is not uncommon in a large group practice, where the doctor doing the egg retrieval often has never met the patient. For me, this only happens when I sub in for other RE’s. I do this probably 6-10 times per year. The running joke is that for some reason, the cases that I tag-team with my colleagues have wound up with astronomical success rates. Higher than my own rates. Higher than their own rates.

So I got the call from my colleague asking if I could fill in, he added that his three patients had been a bit nervous about him not doing the egg retrieval, but they had read my website and my blog and felt really comfortable as if they knew me. One patient, in particular told me as I met her in the pre-op room that she had read every last word of my blog and that it had calmed her fears.

The surgeries were all scheduled for Friday AM. However, I got an unexpected call from my colleague again on Wednesday AM. He was profusely apologetic. A mixup had occurred. Usually, the nurses call the IVF patients and instruct them on when to take their trigger shot of hCG. In my practice, I have them take it 35 hours exactly before the egg retrieval is scheduled. This ensures the maximum chance that the eggs are mature, but have not yet released by the time we go get them. Well, this time, the doctor had wanted to be extra diligent and so instead of having the nurses call, he had called the patient himself and explained the time that she was to take hCG on Wednesday night was at 11PM in preparation for a Friday retrieval at 10AM.

For some reason, the patient thought she had heard incorrectly and wasn’t sure if she was supposed to take her shot at 11PM that night or 11AM, so she called back. Unfortunately, the office phone system was on the fritz or something and she kept getting a voice mail recording with no way to get a hold of anyone. She then made the panicked decision to take her hCG immediately some time after noon. By the time it was clarified, we were in a jam. She had already taken her shot. The eggs were now set to release Thursday night, shortly after midnight rather than on Friday morning.

It turned out to be kind of a fun thing for the anesthesiologist, nursing staff, and myself. We all met up at midnight to do her case. The patient herself was very sweet. She kept apologizing to us and thanking us for taking time out from our sleep to meet up with her at such an odd hour. She and husband even joked “I bet you are going to blog about this, aren’t you?”. The nurses were all touched because the patient’s cute little sister had made hand-crafted thank-you-cards for everyone, with enclosed gift cards to local restaurants.

Anyway, everything went smoothly. We got a lot of eggs and I am pretty sure her chances of a baby are quite high. I’m the kind of person who likes variety and it was certainly a different experience to do one time, although not something I would prefer to do on a regular basis. It did make me grateful for my job and it gave me renewed respect for my OB and ER colleagues who are out there giving medical care at all hours on a regular basis.