Infertility Podcast & Blog

This is some very disturbing news and if you live in Minnesota pay close attention. A doctor at the University of Minnesota’s Reproductive Medicine Center lost a flash drive that hold medical information about 3,100 patients going back to about 1999!

The story seems to get even worse…

University of Minnesota regulations require doctors to encode information on flash drives. Nagel did not do that on his flash drive nor did he use a password.

Now that is just total incompetence! I know that the doctor wrote a letter of apology but IMO this is a fireable offense. When you don’t encrypt sensitive information and you are supposed to, then on top of that you loose the flash drive, that screams for the person to loose their job.

There is some good news however since the patient data didn’t contain any financial or social security numbers. It seems that the dumb are truly protected.

Tags: Infertility News by aaron
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My sister was home for the weekend with her whole family and then decided to send her middle child over to me for a 2 day stay. My niece is 6 years old close to Rivky’s age. She can be quite a handful but we’re managing. My niece tells me she wants to stay at our home for 10 months. Mm, what does that say about her home life? I told her I think she’d be sad to miss seeing her new sister do all the neat things babies learn to do in the first 10 months. She thought about it and then had to agree with me. My sister’s doing well. Her baby seems to be pretty easy going. Sleeping a lot and not too fussy. Lucky her.

Tags: Family, General by malky
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Malky and I return from Macworld and give you details of our trip and the latest infertility news and opinion.

Tags: Infertility News, Podcast by aaron
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I had a real hard time today bringing myself to go to the hospital but we finally went. I was very emotional at first and my sister realized that. We had a good talk and hug and I felt better after that. I held the baby for a while. She is beautiful and looks so much like Rivky when she was born. Rivky was big as well - 9.9 at birth and had the same big cheeks and red skin coloring. It’s so peaceful to hold a newborn. I’m glad that I did.

My sister and her new baby will, G-d willing, be going home tomorrow. I offered to have one of her other children over for Shabbos (Saturday) but she said that she wants them all home for the homecoming. She might send one of them over later next week.

Tags: Family, General by malky
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My sister gave birth today at 4:31pm to a healthy 9 pound 1 ounce baby girl. Both mom and baby are doing well and are in good health. We were all very surprised that the baby is so big - her other children where all born 6 pounds and change. This is her 4th child. She has 2 other girls and a boy as well.

I am proud of myself that my first emotions where relief that both mommy and baby made it through alright. She had some bumps in the road to having this baby - although not infertility exactly. It’s nice to see that this could still happen for her.

A few hours after that the self pity party began. I guess I’m still human and wish a good pregnancy for myself as well. So when will our turn come or will it ever be our turn again? ….

We will be going to visit my sister at the hospital tomorrow. I hope I’ll be able to handle it well.

Tags: Family, General by malky
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So our trip was a big hit. I had a very good time. We were in San Jose for 2 days - I went to a movie and mall shopping and we had dinner with some friends. Then it was off to San Francisco. Aaron and I walked around Macworld which was a new experience for me. I’ve been to trade shows in NY years ago, when I worked in the city, but to nothing of this magnitude. The only disappointment was that I didn’t run into any podcasters that I listen to while there. Afterwards, I heard there where quite a few that attended Macworld but most of them where not there the day I went. Oh well. It was still nice to be apart of a major tech event.

Wednesday I took the cable cars to Fisherman’s Wharf and took the Red and White boat tour. I highly recommend this boat company. They give out individual headphones with devices to listen to the narration in a choice of 8 languages. The narration was very well done and we saw the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge. The weather was stunning that day - sunny and in the 60’s. The tour was about 1 hour which I thought was a perfect length.

After that, I took the trolley back to Union Square and shopped some more. Some of those stores are so pricey! I don’t get the concept of spending $1,600 on a sun dress. I guess some people do otherwise they wouldn’t sell them.

All in all it was a very nice get away. Rivky did great while staying with a friend of mine. We are all glad to be back home despite the freezing cold weather in NY.

We stayed at the Sir Francis Drake hotel - a very classy, well maintained, old hotel in the heart of Union Square.

That’s me modeling off laptop bags for women. Aaron really wanted to get me one but alas they aren’t available for purchase yet. They are real pretty though.

Tags: Family, General by malky
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Malky and I returned from our trip on Thursday night and Friday morning respectively. I had a good time, in spite having to work most of the days and I think that Malky did as well. We took lots of pictures while we walked around at MacWorld on Tuesday afternoon and hopefully I can convince Malky to post some of them in another post.

It was nice to have a chance and walk a trade show with Malky and get a chance to look at stuff that we would both like. We missed Rivky greatly and when I picked her up from the bus stop on Friday you can tell that although she had a good time where she was staying for the week, she was glad to be back home.

Tags: Family, General by aaron
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We talk about male infertility a lot and there are lots of different reasons for why there is male factor infertility. Almost as many reasons for male factor as there are for female factor infertility. Well, here is a urologist that is now using a procedure called “microdisection” where the doctors can search the testicles for sperm.

It is a pretty interesting article and here is a bit of what goes into the procedure:

Jeremy was given anesthesia and his testicles were exposed from the scrotum. Sandlow then opened the covering of his testis and used a microscope to examine the tubules where the sperm are made. Once he found one, he removed it with micro-instruments and sent it to the in vitro fertilization lab, where they looked at the tissue in the operating room and told him it contained 11 sperm.

After that it’s time for IVF. An interesting way to help couples have children.

Tags: Infertility News by aaron
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In this spine tingling episode of The Second Time Around, Malky and I interview Conceive Magazine Founder and CEO Kim Hahn about the magazine, it’s beginnings and what’s coming up for the publication.

Show Notes:

• Conceive Magazine
• INCIID
• Fertility Journal: A Day-to-Day Guide to Getting Pregnant
• Beginning and Ending music by John Benedict

Tags: Infertility News, Podcast by aaron
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As Malky and I have been mentioning, I am going to be at MacWorld this week. Malky thought that it would be a good idea to let some of you know what booth that I’m going to be at in case you will be there as well and would like to say hi. The booth number is S-1843 and the company is Kerio. I’ll be there Wednesday and Thursday and Malky and I will be walking about the exhibit hall on Tuesday afternoon.

Tags: General, Podcast by aaron
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