By Amelia Ramirez, Donor Coordinator
Amelia Ramirez
Amelia Ramirez started with Oregon Reproductive Medicine in early 2018. She provides clinical support to egg donors who are matched to help them through the donation process.
You may have many questions about the process if you are considering egg donation, but one important topic is your time commitment once matched with a recipient family. ORM Donors have various schedules, some are in school and others work part-time or full-time. Let’s visualize the application and screening process through a relatable ORM Donor. We’ll call her Katie. ;)
Katie is a full-time graduate student who works part-time and wants to be an ORM Donor. Will she have time? She has classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9 am-3 pm. She also works at a local bakery starting at 6:00 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Just Matched Meeting
Match Katie has completed our approval process and has been active on our donor database for two months prior to being chosen by a recipient family. Our match coordinator, Corby Barnes, will send Katie a congratulatory message once matched. Corby will then collect the initial bits of information that donor coordinators need in order to plan a cycle. This information includes Katie’s period start date, birth control type, and any upcoming travel dates.
Time commitment at match: 15 minutes
Initial Appointment
Donor coordinators use the information from the match meeting to get oriented to a possible timeline for Katie’s donation cycle. We will send Katie an introductory message with her instructions, which includes scheduling an initial appointment. This appointment is flexible from Monday through Friday between 7:00 am and 2:00 pm. During this appointment, ORM Donors meet with our nurse practitioner, complete a urine drug screen, and meet with her coordinator to complete paperwork and discuss a birth control start date.
Time commitment: 45 minutes
Precycle Testing Appointment
Once Katie has started birth control and all pieces of pre-cycle testing are complete then her donor coordinator can look at dates for a calendar.
Time commitment: 1 hour (varies dependent on lab results)
One Day Visit
The tentative calendar will list required appointments. Tentative calendar dates are based on Katie’s birth control schedule and any out-of-town dates she has scheduled. Once Katie has approved the tentative calendar – we finalize her calendar and schedule her appointments. Her recipients receive updates throughout her calendar as they track the progress of her cycle. She will have a “one day visit” which is generally a 2-hour appointment that includes an injection training, FDA infectious disease testing, and meeting with a physician.
Time commitment: 2 hours
Morning Appointments During Injections
Once Katie has started injections, she will need appointments every other day between 7:00 am-11:00 am. The appointments must be scheduled in the morning so that we can get lab results back and update her medication doses. Since Katie works early on Tuesday and Thursday – we can do our best to make the majority of her appointments fall on Monday, Wednesday, Friday so that she can come into the clinic before class.
Time commitment: Approximately six 20 minute appointments when in cycle = 2 hours
Retrieval Day
The week of the retrieval is the period that can require the most scheduling flexibility on behalf of the donor. Since as the retrieval date is determined based on lab results, we can get close but we cannot predict the exact date of egg retrieval surgery until we are approaching the end of the cycle. The final week often requires additional appointments to monitor follicle growth. For this reason, we make sure Katie is aware that she may have to miss class or work during the retrieval week. We can provide a doctor’s note for any appointments that require her to miss school or work.
Flexibility at ORM
Our team knows that our egg donors are diverse adults living busy lives so we do our absolute best to be flexible and work around our donors’ schedules. Anne Marie, an ORM Donor, shared her experience working with the ORM team around her schedule, “An initial fear I had going into the whole process was accommodating the doctor’s appointments into my busy school schedule, but ORM works very attentively to help alleviate that!”
Register for our upcoming Egg Chat to learn more about becoming an Egg Donor