Katie S., a hairstylist in Lake Elsinore, CA, and her husband tried
to conceive for 6 years—with no success.
“I felt like I was always jumping through hoops trying to get doctors to help me figure out what the problem was,” Katie remembers. “All my friends and family members my age were building their own families, and I began to feel more and more like I didn’t fit in anywhere. I felt like I was broken.”
Katie and her husband decided to try fertility treatments. Katie’s aunt, an operating room nurse, recommended John Norian, MD, of HRC Fertility.
“My aunt said that when a patient is under anesthesia, you really see the doctor’s character because they don’t have to be nice when the patients are asleep,” Katie said. “She said that Dr. Norian was always a gentleman, and that he is truly a kindhearted man. She also said that he had really great outcomes.”
Katie and her husband went to meet Dr. Norian. Immediately, they had a “good feeling” about HRC Fertility at Rancho Cucamonga—and Dr. Norian—from the very start. “Right off the bat, we liked him,” Katie said. “I enjoyed our consultation, and we felt at peace with his suggestion of IVF.”
That’s when Katie and her husband began the journey that changed their lives and healed her broken self.
Their IVF experience began quite typically. Dr. Norian ran some tests, prescribed some medications, harvested the eggs, and transferred two of them. Then Katie’s story took an unusual turn. Two days after the embryo transfer, she began feeling very ill. Six days after, she was admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit for sepsis caused by E.coli poisoning. It was completely unrelated to the fertility treatments—just bad timing and luck.
In the ICU, Katie’s blood pressure fell dangerously low, and her heart rate and white blood cell counts soared dangerously high. She and her husband were terrified that her body might not be able to sustain a pregnancy. But when the doctors checked her hCG levels, all were astounded to her that they were skyrocketing!
“As I lied in that ICU bed, surrounded by beeping monitors with wires stuck on all over me, my husband and I embraced and cried,” Katie said. “It was not the way I pictured that moment to be, but the emotions were more beautiful than I ever thought possible.”
Dr. Norian carefully monitored Katie’s pregnancy. “After many years of going to careless doctors, who always treated me like I was just one fish in a huge school, Dr. Norian made me feel like I was the only fish in the whole sea,” Katie said.
After a rocky start, Katie went on to have a healthy pregnancy. Her son, Tafton, is now two months old. “He is the light of my life,” Katie said. “This little baby picked up the broken pieces of my heart and glued them all back together again. I feel like me again.”
“I was so fortunate that I conceived on my first try of IVF, and I don’t take that for granted. I hope that other women who may have lost themselves can find the courage to take the next steps in their journeys to find who they are again. It was the best thing I have ever done.”
About the author: Jennifer Bright Reich is a mom of two sons, cofounder of www.mommymdguides.com, and coauthor of The Mommy MD Guide to Pregnancy and Birth. She was grateful to HRC fertility for the opportunity to write this guest blog.