Video Transcript
Dr. Rami Kaldas: Become your own advocates and don’t feel guilty about seeking help where help can be found because a lot of people delay and delay and delay because they don’t want to hurt their doctor’s feelings. But if they’re not getting you results or if it feels like two and two are not adding up together and it’s not a rational approach that is being applied and I use that word algorithm frequently. If this then that, if this then that. First figure out what’s going on and then do something about it. And if that is not happening, if…if drugs are just haphazardly being thrown at you, if you’re coming in saying we’re having a hard time getting pregnant, it’s been two years or whatever it is, and we thought fertility drugs might be necessary. And she or he says, oh, sure, here’s your script. Here you go.
No, come over here. We’ll help you out. Go back and have your baby with them. We’re real, real good with that.
An example is with endometriosis because there is such a huge overlap with fertility and endometriosis. Average number of doctors, five. Average years to diagnosis, nine and a half or ten.
OK, now that is constantly being reported. And even though there’s more awareness of that disease process that affects so many millions of reproductive-age women and cause so many billion dollars of lost productivity hours each year in this country and worldwide, still, the treatments, the number of times that I have seen people come in who wish to become pregnant and who have bad, painful menses that are incapacitating or a bunch of diarrhea when they get their period or are unable to have intercourse, they don’t want to have intercourse with their boyfriend or their husband because it just hurts too badly. Number of people, but still want to get pregnant who have been put on the contraceptive pill to try to take care of the pain. Even though they told the doctor, I want to get pregnant, blows my mind.
Nobody’s getting pregnant on the pill. Right? Nobody’s getting pregnant with an IUD in there. But this is what we’re going to do. No one’s getting pregnant if they’re put on something that turns their ovaries off for the pain.
Get over the hurdle psychologically of seeking help, of coming here and figuring it out. If you ask direct questions of your doctor and they are unable to answer them, that’s OK. They’re not bad doctors. They’re not bad people, but they’re not going to get you to where you want to be.
Don’t…don’t be in denial. And don’t do something just because you’re afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. And I’m real. I like to think I’m a really nice guy. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but on the other hand, I want you to succeed.