Needed to go international for care after 3 failed surgeries
I’m writing this as a warning/ advice to other women in maybe the same situation as me to share what I’ve been thru in the USA with healthcare. As some background, my husband and I have been doing Ivf on and off for quite a couple of years now and we had a miscarriage this last March which led me to want to investigate more as shady grove fertility wasn’t giving me the answers I needed.
My surgical history below;
2017- Myomectomy with the worst possible doctor on planet earth who scarred my completely okay tubes. Also left a massive scar that became a keloid above my belly button, later he was sued by many women for this matter. The actual devil.
2021- bilateral salpingectomy, left ovary removal. Endo resection.
2025 - endo resection, removal of 1 fibroid. (I had a diagnoses of DIE and was told he was able to separate everything and clean up everything)
All three surgeries with different doctors who all promised pregnancy would be achieved after this from what they saw.
After my last surgery I was adamant that Ivf should work. After my miscarriage, I wanted more answers and the doctors just kept saying you don’t need surgery, you don’t need an mri again. Mind you they implanted a completely healthy, tested and our last embryo in a fibroid uterus. I could tell something was wrong because I kept having pain near my rectum and my belly was always bloated. I went to a different Obgyn who ordered an mri and lo and behold - 19 fibroids with two nodules on my rectum still existing. I was so exhausted with US healthcare I had no idea why no one was operating on any of this correctly or why it was being left in again and again. To live with 25 fibroids is not a joke and to have surgery again and again isn’t either. I work for a company that has fantastic health care and has Ivf benefits which is why I never cared to go abroad for any treatment but after all of this, I was so tired I chose to go back to India to get treatment. I was operated on laparoscopically, was given a gnrh after to starve the remaining endo if any and to shrink my bulky uterus. He also diagnosed me with adenomyosis which the US never did. He was able to treat all of it at once.
I will not sugarcoat it, Us hospitals and Indian hospitals are not comparative. The whole thing was a big strain on me. I have family in India and therefore recovery was okay but nothing compared to what it would have been back home in the USA. I want to say all of this as cautionary tale that if something feels wrong, please question it and seek care elsewhere. The last Obgyn I saw was one of the most recommended in the area for endometriosis and he told me “this is like a bag of marbles, I don’t think I can operate on this level” and asked me to go to a doctor out of network to get operated. He was actually adamant on me getting a hysterectomy.
Currently, I’m healing but I’m super traumatized by everything I’ve had to go through. I’m not sure we will attempt Ivf again because of how exhausted we both are mentally but I do feel like the level of care and the plan to actually treat this long term felt better elsewhere than just being told either get pregnant asap or have a hysterectomy.
If you have similar stories, I’d like to hear. Wishing you all so much strength. We don’t talk enough about how debilitating these issues can be.