99. A Day at Radiant Clinic: Personalized Care in Action

What does a typical day look like at Radiant Clinic, where we treat our patients with Restorative Reproductive Medicine (RRM)? It’s not just about fertility — we also care for teens with painful periods, women navigating PCOS or endometriosis, couples trying to conceive, those dealing with pregnancy loss, and even women in perimenopause. In this episode, Dr. Minjeur walks you through a day in her RRM practice, sharing real-life examples of how real women’s health care is done differently.

If you would like to be a patient in our clinic day, go to our website to schedule a visit or a free discovery call and learn more about how to get started. Check out https://radiantclinic.com to learn more!

Transcript

Monica: 0:02

Welcome back to Cycle Wisdom, where we empower women to restore natural menstrual cycles, to improve health and promote fertility. I'm your host, Dr. Monica Minjeur, and I'm so glad you're listening today. Have you ever wondered what actually happens inside of a restorative reproductive medicine clinic? It's not your typical five minute prescription refill or come back in a year type of visit. Here. Every patient story is different, and so is the plan that we build together. From teens struggling with painful periods to couples battling unexplained infertility, to women navigating perimenopause with dignity and knowledge, it is a whole different model of care. Today I wanna take you behind the scenes. So let's spend a day together at Radiant Clinic so you can see for yourself how real answers. Real compassion and real results happen in restorative reproductive medicine. Now I'm going to be sharing a view of the day from my perspective as the doctor in our clinic. However, the place would fall apart if it wasn't for my amazing team, including a patient care specialist, nursing staff, a lab technician, charting instructors and coaches. While I'm spending time in direct care with patients throughout the day, during their visits, my team is fielding phone calls, answering questions, talking to new patients about how to get started with care and meeting with our patients to provide the specialized care and education within their areas of expertise. So let's get started. When I first show up at the clinic, I typically spend some time either reviewing lab results from the prior day and getting back to patients, or I might be answering patient emails that came in overnight or over the weekend, or responding to text messages or questions regarding their ongoing treatment plan. Sometimes I'm either planning or recording a podcast or working with our social media team in order to decide what's going to be posted this next week or corresponding with other doctors from all over the world in regards to what is best next steps for our patients or consulting on their cases. I also spend some time touching base with my team in order to prepare for seeing patients for the day. So our first patient comes in and this morning we're gonna be seeing Claudia. Now she's a 15-year-old who came in with painful periods and she had been missing quite a bit of school on the first couple days of her cycle every month. Now this is her initial visit with me, and so I started off with collecting a detailed menstrual history, and we spent a good amount of time talking about charting her cycles and what that would entail. I. I got her set up with one of our charting instructors to meet with after our visit, and we discussed some plans in order to help with pain management. In the meantime, while we do additional evaluation. Claudia and I spent some time talking through different anti-inflammatory foods medications, as well as some lifestyle changes that she could make in the meantime to help with her symptoms. I also screened for things like endometriosis or significant. Issues that could regard need for higher level of care, like perhaps coordinating with a surgeon. We also talked through the emotional support, and Claudia and her mother both felt validated with being able to express their concerns in a way that didn't include just jumping to hormonal contraceptive in order to cover up the symptoms. Most importantly, we came up with a game plan as to how to further evaluate what was going on with her concerns. So I ordered an ultrasound as well as some detailed lab work to be done at specific times during Claudia's cycle, and then set a follow-up appointment for her to come back in a couple of weeks after those labs were done so we could discuss any additional treatments that may be indicated based on our findings from those labs. After I wrap up with Claudia, I go to my next visit, which is actually a telehealth visit. I sign on and I meet with Tina. She is a 19-year-old college student who has been dealing with irregular periods for the past couple of years now. Based on our initial consultation, I had suspected hypothalamic amenorrhea, primarily because she was not getting adequate calorie intake and had a significant amount of stress as a very high level athlete and an excellent student. We're reviewing today her lab evaluation, which confirmed what I had suspected in that she had low luteinizing hormone, very low estradiol levels. In fact, they were almost menopausal levels and a low TSH or thyroid stimulating hormone. Tina and I spent the majority of our time discussing counseling on nutrition and restoring her cycles. We also discussed the need to potentially refer her onto a dietician as well as to work with the trainers at her school in order to make sure that she was getting adequate caloric intake in order to be able to adequately manage and get her regular cycles back on track. We also discussed the role of hormone support in the meantime to help with regulating her cycles because long-term we don't want to have these low estrogen levels causing significant problems as far as bone health and long-term consequences that could result in significant injuries and increase her risk of stress, fractures and bone density concerns, which would absolutely impair her ability to continue competitive athletics. I truly believe that teens deserve better care than what masks their symptoms by just providing them with hormonal contraceptives. Part of my mission at Radiant Clinic is to build this body literacy and long-term health from the beginning. So I love working with teenagers in order to help give them the education they need in order to get things set off on the right foot. Okay. After Tina's visit wraps up, I move on to my next visit with Maria and her partner. Now, Maria is 34 years old and she and her husband have been trying to conceive for the past year. Prior to coming to our clinic, Maria and her husband had been told that everything looked normal and they should just keep trying, but her charting revealed a different story. Maria was not having a significant ovulation event and the hormone levels were not reaching optimal levels in order to be able to conceive and be able to maintain that pregnancy. So we reviewed her charting and her labs showed a short luteal phase with abnormal progesterone levels. She also had some inflammatory markers that were borderline elevated, as well as some adrenal insufficiency and thyroid dysfunction. So this seemed to be quite a lot of things going on. So Maria and I spent a long time discussing the treatment plan, what made the most sense for her, as well as how we could work together moving forward to work towards correcting these underlying diagnoses that were playing a role with her infertility. I. We arranged for some tracking ultrasounds to be done with her next cycle, E, both before and after ovulation. We also discussed the addition of bioidentical progesterone support as well as how to help with her thyroid and adrenal glands through supplements, lifestyle changes, and prescription strength medications. We wrapped up Maria's visit by coordinating some additional semen analysis as well as lab testing for her husband to be done because we wanted to make sure that we're not missing any other factors that may be playing a role with their troubles conceiving. After Maria, I finally get to take a little quick lunch break because my staff knows it's so important to keep me well fed in order to keep going for the afternoon. So after a quick lunch break, reviewing a few more labs and touching base with my staff. Our next visit is with Simone. Now Simone and her husband are in today for a pregnancy confirmation visit. She's approximately eight weeks pregnant and she had had three miscarriages prior to coming to us to work together to solve the underlying cause of those miscarriages. Now it was a great day for everyone because this ultrasound we did confirmed heartbeat strong development, and baby was measuring right on the money from where we think things should be based on Simone's known ovulation date. We discussed follow-up lab monitoring of her progesterone and estrogen levels, as well as evaluation monitoring for thyroid and testosterone support when it was appropriate. I. We reviewed the plan for coordination with her obstetrics care team for the labor and delivery process, as well as ongoing overall management, and we set up a game plan to meet again later on towards the end of second trimester or early third trimester in order to touch base and discussed postpartum charting, postpartum breastfeeding, postpartum depression, and how we would continue to coordinate care with her obstetrics team throughout the remainder of her pregnancy. After Simone left, my next visit was another telehealth session with Carolyn. Now Carolyn is a 46-year-old and she came to see us because she was dealing with irregular heavy periods as well as mood swings. Her initial labs had showed estrogen dominance as well as low progesterone. Now at the last visit I had started her on bioidentical progesterone hormone support as well as dietary changes. So today's visit, we were following up on those lab results, making sure that we were seeing the improvements we wanted, and indeed we were seeing an increase in the progesterone, a leveling out of the estrogen levels. And overall, she noted that she was feeling much better. In fact, her most recent period had cut down to just five days instead of the previous eight to nine days that she had been having prior to treatment. Carolyn and I discussed the long-term interventions as far as monitoring of breast health, bone health, her mood, as well as metabolic markers. And we discussed the significant importance of trying to avoid an unnecessary hysterectomy if it was not warranted. Initially when Carolyn had come to see me, this was the only option that she had been offered. So she was thrilled to not have to go through a surgery and be able to find that her symptoms were much more manageable. She told me that she felt like she could actually make it all the way through menopause now without feeling like she needed to suffer. My final visit of the day is with Sarah. Now, Sarah had been through multiple rounds of different medications and hormones, trying to help with balancing painful periods. From the very first visit, I identified that I was suspicious of endometriosis for Sarah, and so we had gotten her referred to a surgeon early on. Now most of our surgeons do take quite some time to get in to see, because I want to send you to see a specially trained restorative reproductive medicine surgeon, and there's not a lot of them throughout the country. So over the course of the past five or six months, Sarah and I had worked together on some different lifestyle modifications on supplements, on some hormones in order to try and help improve her symptoms. And although things were significantly better, she still was dealing with some pain. Every cycle. So Sarah finally was coming up on this appointment with her surgeon, and she's scheduled to see them in about three weeks from now. And so rather than just referring her out and moving on, Sarah and I are going to stay connected throughout this whole time before the surgery, during and afterwards to make sure that her journey is supported every step of the way. So as we talked through everything, we discussed one more set of labs to order prior to surgery. I reviewed her charting documentation to make sure that that was up to date, and then I completed a letter to her surgeon explaining what had already been done. I. Providing all of the lab work that had been completed as well as coordination of that ongoing medical care around the time of her surgery. So I look forward to seeing Sarah's operative note and hopefully being able to get some resolution of her symptoms so that we can graduate her from medical care if indeed we find endometriosis. So after seeing these patients, I'm finally ready to wrap up my day. I typically spend some additional time finishing up charting, reviewing some more lab evaluations, as well as just making sure that everything is tucked away for the day. So I'm ready for the next day to. To start. So as you can tell, you know, I only see six patients in a day. Sometimes it's five, sometimes it's seven. But typically we don't rush our visits. Almost all of our client visits are 60 minutes. Every once in a while we have a 30 minute visit, but for the most part, we're taking a good amount of time with each of our patients. I take the time to review their cycles and look at them as vital signs, and we collaborate together not only with surgeons, but with our coaches, with dieticians, with looking at mail factor when we need to evaluate for fertility, and then we are testing frequently and adjusting our medication and treatment plans based on that real time data. This kind of practice allows me to have real connection with my patients in order to lead to better outcomes, better trust of the medical system, and overall better outcomes within the world of restorative reproductive medicine, and especially at my clinic, we are finding. Lower miscarriage rates, higher natural conception success, and better hormone regulation long term, not to mention significant improvement in cycle related symptoms and hormone symptoms. Imagine if your doctor didn't just treat your symptoms but partnered with you to uncover the underlying cause of your menstrual issues, your fertility struggles, or your hormone imbalances. That's what I get the honor of doing every day at Radiant Clinic, and you don't have to wait for a referral or a crisis to get started with us. If you've been looking for a deeper, more personalized approach to your reproductive health, I would love for you to be a part of our story of what happens in our clinic every single day. If you're ready to work with our elite team of healthcare professionals, go to our website, radiant clinic.com to schedule a free discovery call and learn more about our package based pricing for comprehensive care. We are currently able to see people for in-person appointments in our Cedar Rapids, Iowa Clinic, or can arrange for a telehealth visit if you live in many different states across the us. Check out our website for current states that we can serve medical clients and let us know if your state is not listed to see if we can still cover you there as we are constantly expanding our reach, please note that our fertility educators are able to take care of clients no matter where they live. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Please share this podcast with someone in your life who would benefit from our services. Remember to subscribe to this podcast for more empowering content that I look forward to sharing with you on our next episode of Cycle Wisdom.