It's been a few years now since I was a patient at Spring, and I want to share my terrible experience at this clinic in hopes that it will be helpful to other people in my situation who are seeking compassionate and competent treatment.
My spouse and I sought out Spring specifically because they like to position their clinics as experts in LGBTQ+ family planning, and claim to have expertise treating transgender and nonbinary people. My spouse is a nonbinary person on hormone replacement therapy, and it was extremely important to us to find a clinic and a doctor with some experience treating trans people. We were referred to Dr. Dovey as the clinic's "LGBTQ expert," and I went into my first consult with her having high hopes for a good experience.
During that consult, Dr. Dovey misgendered my spouse every single time she referred to them. To give her credit where credit is due, she would correct herself, and then misgender them again two sentences later, correct herself, and so on and so forth. At the point at which someone misgenders you ten times in a row, you really start to wonder if they are even trying to get it right, especially when the person in question is supposed to be the organization's "LGBTQ expert." Dr. Dovey also proposed a lot of unnecessary measures with regards to my spouse, like stopping their hormone treatments to collect even more genetic materials from them (when they had already cryopreserved more than the recommended amount of reproductive materials prior to the beginning of their transition). Ultimately, it felt like Dr. Dovey didn't actually care about trans people, understanding trans experiences in medical settings, or my spouse's individual experience at the clinic.
My spouse had a range of experiences with other staff at the clinic, from being gendered correctly to other people misgendering them. Not a particularly great sign from a place that is supposed to be "good" about trans issues! Even so, we might have tried to stick with Spring, but they also messed up pretty badly in another area.
Like many people who wind up in fertility clinics, I have some chronic health conditions. Most of them are not genetic and are not genetically transmissible. However, I do have one very rare genetic mutation that results in lower bone density than the average person my age. IF my spouse were to be a carrier for the same very rare genetic mutation, it MIGHT cause a child of ours to experience a similar condition. I want to be clear that in my day-to-day life, this condition does not really affect me negatively and I have no reason to think about it unless I'm discussing my medical history.
While we were in the initial steps of our process at Spring, Dr. Dovey and her staff repeatedly communicated to me that they would essentially require my spouse to have a very particular genetic test done (one so specific that my spouse's PCP could not order it and would have had to refer them to a genetic specialist to do so) to ensure that any potential embryos we created would not have this condition. The clinic refused to move forward with our process until my spouse got the testing done, and it really came across as "we don't want your potential child to turn out like YOU." Which, to be honest, felt insulting, gross, policing, and completely unnecessary. It really didn't feel like the clinic's business or call whether we chose to get the genetic testing done or not, but Spring absolutely made it their call. This is what really killed any chances of our working with Spring, and we just quietly dropped out of the process.
Spring comes across as a clinic that cares a lot about its numbers and success rates, and a place that doesn't have a problem throwing up roadblocks for people whose health conditions might possibly impact how good their numbers look. For chronically ill and disabled people, this kind of vibe essentially sends the message "we don't care about you and we don't really want to treat you." At least, that's the way I felt after my experience at Spring.
People and organizations can change, and I hope that in the years since I attempted to be a patient there, Dr. Dovey and Spring have improved. In fact, I know people who have had positive experiences with Dr. Dovey and Spring! However, based on my personal experience of this clinic, I can't recommend her as a practitioner or the clinic as a safe space for trans people or chronically ill and disabled people. If you belong to one of those groups, do your research, interview clinics and ask about their training and experience with these patient populations, and go from there -- but don't go to Spring. read more