Shady Grove girls...

jej05 · December 2010

I'm looking at contacting them about doing a donor egg cycle there. Any "inside" tips/info I should know? One of my main concerns is the travel distance but if I like what I hear about them and from them we would make the trip. I've been looking around their website. It's so much info! I've been seeing an RE here in my city but the selection of donors for me is VERY limited and my gut is just pushing me to Shady Grove for some reason. Anyway, any thoughts are appreciated

TIA!

SLPMel · December 2010

Just to go to the Rockville location. That is where they do all the Donor stuff anyways-bu definitely see the RE's there!!!! Good luck!

hollymichael · December 2010

We are in the Shady Grove donor egg guarantee program. We live in Chicago, but decided to travel to Shady Grove as we wanted a guarantee plan. I couldn't deal with spending the kind of $$ involved with donor eggs without some sort of a financial guarantee. We are in the 3:1 program. It is 29K and you get all your money back if no success after 6 fresh cycles. You can quit at any time and get your money back. They also give you $300 back per cycle if you are from out of state since you will be doing your monitoring elsewhere.

So far, we have been very happy. We went out in September for all the preliminary testing and my DH froze a sample. I will go back out by myself for the tranfer at the end of January. So, it the first cycle works, it will have only involved two trips to D.C.

Donor pool is just ok, although we found a donor pretty quickly.They do update the list all the time, so you have to keep a close eye on the pool. The good donors do get picked fast. You only see childhood photos, not adult photos.

I would have preferred to find something closer to home, but there wasn't anything available with a similar guarantee. Having to travel isn't ideal, but so far, it hasn't caused any major issues for us. I just hope the weather cooperates when I go back out in a few weeks.

Their stats are only ok, but the guarantee plan is a huge deal to me. I wouldn't travel there unless you do one of their guarantee plans. If you aren't doing the guarantee, then there are other clinics you can travel to with better stats.

JM1977 is also at SG and she travels there as well.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I am happy to try to help!

jej05 · December 2010

hollymichael:

We are in the Shady Grove donor egg guarantee program. We live in Chicago, but decided to travel to Shady Grove as we wanted a guarantee plan. I couldn't deal with spending the kind of $$ involved with donor eggs without some sort of a financial guarantee. We are in the 3:1 program. It is 29K and you get all your money back if no success after 6 fresh cycles. You can quit at any time and get your money back. They also give you $300 back per cycle if you are from out of state since you will be doing your monitoring elsewhere.

So far, we have been very happy. We went out in September for all the preliminary testing and my DH froze a sample. I will go back out by myself for the tranfer at the end of January. So, it the first cycle works, it will have only involved two trips to D.C.

Donor pool is just ok, although we found a donor pretty quickly.They do update the list all the time, so you have to keep a close eye on the pool. The good donors do get picked fast. You only see childhood photos, not adult photos.

I would have preferred to find something closer to home, but there wasn't anything available with a similar guarantee. Having to travel isn't ideal, but so far, it hasn't caused any major issues for us. I just hope the weather cooperates when I go back out in a few weeks.

Their stats are only ok, but the guarantee plan is a huge deal to me. I wouldn't travel there unless you do one of their guarantee plans. If you aren't doing the guarantee, then there are other clinics you can travel to with better stats.

JM1977 is also at SG and she travels there as well.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I am happy to try to help!

Thank you so much for the detailed response! You ARE coming a distance from Chicago-wow! I'm in Virginia so it wouldn't be as far for me. I'm thinking ~3 hours or so. I need to Google the locations. If I were to cycle with my current RE, I only have about 5 donors to choose from and I didn't "like" any of them. If we didn't choose any of them, we would have to pick a donor outside of our race. If we had to than we would but, I would like to try to pick a donor as close to me as possible. Sorry, I don't know if that made sense!

The 29K, is that paid all up front or do they offer payment plans? Also, what if insurance would cover say my ultrasounds. Is that deducted from the 29K or is the 29K a totally flat fee. Where does insurance come in with the guarantee program? Sorry for so many questions. I'm going to submit a request online for someone to contact me.

Thanks again!

hollymichael · December 2010

jej05:
hollymichael:

We are in the Shady Grove donor egg guarantee program. We live in Chicago, but decided to travel to Shady Grove as we wanted a guarantee plan. I couldn't deal with spending the kind of $$ involved with donor eggs without some sort of a financial guarantee. We are in the 3:1 program. It is 29K and you get all your money back if no success after 6 fresh cycles. You can quit at any time and get your money back. They also give you $300 back per cycle if you are from out of state since you will be doing your monitoring elsewhere.

So far, we have been very happy. We went out in September for all the preliminary testing and my DH froze a sample. I will go back out by myself for the tranfer at the end of January. So, it the first cycle works, it will have only involved two trips to D.C.

Donor pool is just ok, although we found a donor pretty quickly.They do update the list all the time, so you have to keep a close eye on the pool. The good donors do get picked fast. You only see childhood photos, not adult photos.

I would have preferred to find something closer to home, but there wasn't anything available with a similar guarantee. Having to travel isn't ideal, but so far, it hasn't caused any major issues for us. I just hope the weather cooperates when I go back out in a few weeks.

Their stats are only ok, but the guarantee plan is a huge deal to me. I wouldn't travel there unless you do one of their guarantee plans. If you aren't doing the guarantee, then there are other clinics you can travel to with better stats.

JM1977 is also at SG and she travels there as well.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I am happy to try to help!

Thank you so much for the detailed response! You ARE coming a distance from Chicago-wow! I'm in Virginia so it wouldn't be as far for me. I'm thinking ~3 hours or so. I need to Google the locations. If I were to cycle with my current RE, I only have about 5 donors to choose from and I didn't "like" any of them. If we didn't choose any of them, we would have to pick a donor outside of our race. If we had to than we would but, I would like to try to pick a donor as close to me as possible. Sorry, I don't know if that made sense!

The 29K, is that paid all up front or do they offer payment plans? Also, what if insurance would cover say my ultrasounds. Is that deducted from the 29K or is the 29K a totally flat fee. Where does insurance come in with the guarantee program? Sorry for so many questions. I'm going to submit a request online for someone to contact me.

Thanks again!

I believe the 29K is set up as a flat fee and is geared toward people without insurance. I do know they have some other options for those with insurance, so maybe there is a better program for you. I actually have insurance, but it will only cover medical costs. Non medical costs at my clinic in Chicago are around 13K with 50/50 success rates. That was too much of a risk for us. We decided to spend the extra money to have a guarantee.

In my case, my monitoring appointments will be covered by insurance since I will be doing them at the clinic in Chicago, but there is no money taken off the 29K other than the $300/cycle that I mentioned before. So, in your case, you would probably do your monitoring appointments at your local clinic. Your insurance would probably cover those appts and then you would get the $300 credit back from SG.

I am not sure about payment plans. I didn't ask. I do know they have a discounted program if your income is under a certain level. I think they have some loan options too.

They will give you a temporary password so you can check out the donor data base. I did not like the selection the first time I looked, but when I checked again a few months later, there were a lot more options that looked like a good match for us.

FYI: when I first contacted them, they took forever to get back to me. I was a little nervous that they weren't going to be responsive, but since that initial contact, they have been great. I always get a reply to my emails and calls within 24 hours.

Feel free to ask as many questions as you want. I know JM1977 will answer your questions too. She has been a step ahead of me the entire time and has been really helpful in answering my questions.

jej05 · December 2010

hollymichael:
jej05:
hollymichael:

We are in the Shady Grove donor egg guarantee program. We live in Chicago, but decided to travel to Shady Grove as we wanted a guarantee plan. I couldn't deal with spending the kind of $$ involved with donor eggs without some sort of a financial guarantee. We are in the 3:1 program. It is 29K and you get all your money back if no success after 6 fresh cycles. You can quit at any time and get your money back. They also give you $300 back per cycle if you are from out of state since you will be doing your monitoring elsewhere.

So far, we have been very happy. We went out in September for all the preliminary testing and my DH froze a sample. I will go back out by myself for the tranfer at the end of January. So, it the first cycle works, it will have only involved two trips to D.C.

Donor pool is just ok, although we found a donor pretty quickly.They do update the list all the time, so you have to keep a close eye on the pool. The good donors do get picked fast. You only see childhood photos, not adult photos.

I would have preferred to find something closer to home, but there wasn't anything available with a similar guarantee. Having to travel isn't ideal, but so far, it hasn't caused any major issues for us. I just hope the weather cooperates when I go back out in a few weeks.

Their stats are only ok, but the guarantee plan is a huge deal to me. I wouldn't travel there unless you do one of their guarantee plans. If you aren't doing the guarantee, then there are other clinics you can travel to with better stats.

JM1977 is also at SG and she travels there as well.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I am happy to try to help!

Thank you so much for the detailed response! You ARE coming a distance from Chicago-wow! I'm in Virginia so it wouldn't be as far for me. I'm thinking ~3 hours or so. I need to Google the locations. If I were to cycle with my current RE, I only have about 5 donors to choose from and I didn't "like" any of them. If we didn't choose any of them, we would have to pick a donor outside of our race. If we had to than we would but, I would like to try to pick a donor as close to me as possible. Sorry, I don't know if that made sense!

The 29K, is that paid all up front or do they offer payment plans? Also, what if insurance would cover say my ultrasounds. Is that deducted from the 29K or is the 29K a totally flat fee. Where does insurance come in with the guarantee program? Sorry for so many questions. I'm going to submit a request online for someone to contact me.

Thanks again!

I believe the 29K is set up as a flat fee and is geared toward people without insurance. I do know they have some other options for those with insurance, so maybe there is a better program for you. I actually have insurance, but it will only cover medical costs. Non medical costs at my clinic in Chicago are around 13K with 50/50 success rates. That was too much of a risk for us. We decided to spend the extra money to have a guarantee.

In my case, my monitoring appointments will be covered by insurance since I will be doing them at the clinic in Chicago, but there is no money taken off the 29K other than the $300/cycle that I mentioned before. So, in your case, you would probably do your monitoring appointments at your local clinic. Your insurance would probably cover those appts and then you would get the $300 credit back from SG.

I am not sure about payment plans. I didn't ask. I do know they have a discounted program if your income is under a certain level. I think they have some loan options too.

They will give you a temporary password so you can check out the donor data base. I did not like the selection the first time I looked, but when I checked again a few months later, there were a lot more options that looked like a good match for us.

FYI: when I first contacted them, they took forever to get back to me. I was a little nervous that they weren't going to be responsive, but since that initial contact, they have been great. I always get a reply to my emails and calls within 24 hours.

Feel free to ask as many questions as you want. I know JM1977 will answer your questions too. She has been a step ahead of me the entire time and has been really helpful in answering my questions.

You are awesome!! This has been so much help! I'm actually still checking out their website. I sent an e-mail to request the temp passcode and also an e-mail to request more info on the DE program. I got out-of-the office responses to both e-mails but at least I got some sort of response. The liason for the DE program says that she is out for the holidays until Jan 3rd with limited e-mail access but she would respond as soon as possible. The liason for the temp passcode says she'll be back tomorrow! I'm interested to see what their data base looks like I'll be sure to keep you posted. I'm about to go run all of this past DH. I have 3 pages of notes, lol! Thanks SO much again!!

JM1977 · December 2010

Hi! Holly already gave you so much great information about Shady Grove, but I am also happy to answer any questions you might have. Like she said, their shared risk program is one of the best financial options out there.

We are so glad that we decided to have gone this route because our first DE cycle was a huge failure due to there being a much more serious problem on my husband's side than we had previously thought. We got 13 high quality eggs on that cycle, but only 2 fertilized, and we had 2 poor quality embryos to transfer (BFN). As devastating as that was, we hadn't used up all of our resources for that cycle because we are in the shared risk program so were able to just transition to the next cycle (actually with the same egg donor who we really liked and this time using donor sperm). Our cycle was MUCH better this time, and we are hopeful that it was successful.

As Holly said, SG's success rates are not as high as some other clinics (CCRM - https://www.colocrm.com/Home.aspx, San Diego Fertility Center - https://www.sdfertility.com/index.html, and Oregon Reproductive Medicine - www.oregonreproductivemedicine.com), but none of those clinics has a shared risk program that is as reasonable as SG's. For us, it was worth it to know we would have more than one chance.

We have been pleased with the care we have received at SG. Once we got into the donor program, we had an RN assigned to us, who has been in touch with us frequently and who is always available by e-mail or on the phone. Overall, they have seemed accessible and helpful.

I have a couple of documents that they sent me, including a summary of the financial programs they have. If you want to PM me your e-maill address, I would be happy to send you those.

I hope I don't sound like a commercial for SG! I know we were just so relieved that this type of program was out there because we really didn't think DE would be possible for us financially. Any treatments like this are taxing in so many ways, but for us not having these insane amounts of money on the line has helped to take away some of the stress.

I wish you the best!

DeputiesWife · December 2010

Yes - go to Rockville. I have been very happy with them!

good luck!

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