The Retrievals - Ep. 1
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These first two episodes of the retrieval are free, but to hear the whole series, you will need to subscribe to the new york times, where you'll get access to all the serial productions and new york times shows. And it's super easy. You can sign up through apple podcast or spotify.

And if you're already a time subscriber, just link your account and you're done. The women are seeking fertility treatment for a variety of reasons. They've had a couple miscarriages.

They're pushing forty. They don't have flop an tubes or they need sperm. One woman has a diagnosis that's like a metaphor from feminisia I A uterus with a single horn like A U orn.

All of them wind up at the fertility clinic at yale university. A couple of the women choose this clinic because they work at yale, and that's what the yale health plan covers. Others go to yale on the recommendation of their doctors. But in connect cut, you don't even really need the recommendation. Yellow medicine, it's a blue chip medical brand.

you know yells just a huge name and you just think anything that has anything to do with yet is gonna, you know the best of the best.

really not close to our house. That's not where I would have gone. But we figured, you know, another doctor from another hospital said, this is the best you can get. Anyone, of course, you want that.

To some of the women, the clinic seems to live up to its billing. They, like their doctors, feel cared for by them. That man is an Angel.

One of the woman tells me he is by far the best doctor i've ever had. Others are not happy at the clinic from the start at things like feeling like a number or issues with communication. There's a lot to communicate.

You don't know how hard fertility treatment is until you get into IT. And once you started in one place, that can be difficult to go somewhere else. So they talk themselves into staying, that's the first thing. They go against their instincts and talk themselves into.

The women drive to the clinic before work in the morning for blood rows, and then wait for the afternoon email from the nurse team. You really have to trust your nurse team. One of the women tells me, at this point, you did.

The nurse team gives instructions, and the women give themselves shots. These shots contain hormones to stimulate the body to produce eggs. A side effect is emotional volatility.

The wind is making me cry, one of the woman says, but the thing is, you have to stay calm, don't get stressed. It's so stressful trying not to get stressed. One woman uses a fertility meditation APP called expectable.

SHE does her guided meditation on the beach. The APP plays the sound of waves, while the real waves heave in the background. It's absurd, but so much of this is absurd, including the money.

There's all kinds of stuff that's not covered no matter what insurance you have. Meanwhile, you're overs in large and you get so bloated that your above and feels like bricks. And then finally, you get to the day you ve been waiting for the day of the first, agrees val, which is what IT sounds like.

The eggs are removed from the body and then fertilized or frozen, depending on what you're doing. How many eggs am I going to get? That is the big question.

The more eggs you get, the Better your chance of a healthy umbro available pregNancy, a child, the day of the retrieval. The women arrive at the clinic, they check in on different mornings, in different months, in calender years. None of them are here on the same day, but they will come out of the day with the same story.

Laura arrived for her retrieval on a weekday morning in january twenty twenty SHE checks in and changes into a gown. Two months ago, law was diagnosed with breast cancer, a double method me followed then the infection in additional surgeries. As soon as SHE freezes her eggs, she's going to start treatment. It's a lot. Lauren is trying to put all of that to the side and just focus on the procedure ahead.

I was excited like trying, you know, trying to stay positive and just and I was just like having been through so much just the month prior, I was like, this is gonna easy because I had been through so many surgeries and procedures. I was just like, you know, it's, I know what this is like, I know what it's like to be under investigation or something and be given medications. You don't feel things.

The agreed eval is a surgical procedure. A long needle is inserted into the vagina, then pierce through the vaginal al wall and up into the Laura has been told in advance what drug he will be getting during the procedure two drugs.

fat and all in another one, my doors, sam or islam. And I believe that ones to induce sleepiness.

Together, these two drugs offer what's often called moderate sedation. Basically, the funnel takes away pain and the medicine relaxes you. Some people get drowsy with this combination.

Others remain alert. The use of fennel surprises some of the women. One of them, a public defender, has seen a lot of clients mess up by fennel. And for a second, she's worried. Another woman, kd, a neuroscientist at yell, feels a Spark of interest.

And in fact, you know, just being someone who studies addiction and studies some of your disorder, and as a curious person, I remember the morning of thinking like, okay, this will be interesting. I ve never tried them to before, and I, so I expected to go in and have twilight anesthesia. You not full anesthesia, but not feel anything.

The woman complete the last steps before the procedure, get navy, go over some papers. If their partners came back with them. Now their partners say goodbye. And then IT is time the women tell what happens next.

I walked myself into the procedure because you get rolled out afterwards, but you don't have any medication in you. You're just kind of hooked up to the I V. pole. And I walked into there and you know you on the chair or table, whatever they call IT, and that's from there, they said you're not going to feel anything and then you know, they explained everything that was going to happen.

They started the procedure. And you know, I was just sort of taken by surprise, not expecting the exercise pain and just letting them know that I don't think the pain medication is is doing anything. I can really feel like you're stabbing the needle.

I felt everything. It's literally your most internet parts of your body. They're using these long needles and there's also a screen so I can watch what they're doing. And I cn in, I had to try and look away because literally each neele peers, you feel as .

we were moving along IT was my blood pressure started going up. I was sweating profusely and telling them, you know, I was just in too much pain, that they had to stop at that point. I remember them giving me more, more of the pain medication, and me saying, i'm, it's not making, it's not making a difference. You know, a nurse coming over putting a wet tower on my head and another nurse holding my hand and then comforting me in and saying, you know, you going to be OK the nurse.

I and he was at my the top of my body, kind of at my shoulders, wiping the tears away and helping me kind of hold my breath to keep myself still so that the doctors didn't sleep with the need all and just telling me that I was going to be OK, that I was gonna get through IT. And up until that moment, i'm so excited. Like now I have twenty four followers.

Like this is great like i'm gonna have a great agitation, val. And then you're like, oh my god, I wish there was only one. Like everything was counting on that retrieval and that that's what feels like the whole, the way of, you know, your world.

My partner and I, she's counting on me to be able to get through this into have this successful retrieve. And all i'm feeling is, oh my god, I needed to stop. Is this worth IT?

And you know who your feet are in the drops, and you know you should be lying on the table. But I remember tightening up and and just trying to relax my body so that they could do what they needed to do, because I was so tensor, like my bottom was almost off of the table.

I remember like trusting my hips up, actually trusting my hips up, saying, I feel everything like and like, nobody believed. And it's just like.

I don't know what .

would you going to do you know, I wanted the procedure done. I just let that happen and I like i'm awake. so.

No, no, I was stone cold sober and awake and I remember I I, the agrevo, you know, they kind of do them one by one, like a couple at a time, you know, my impression. And so you have moments in between pain to say, like what the fuck is going on?

I do remember I think I sore. I was using curse words because I was just so painful.

I don't know if I can do this any longer, you know you just have to get through IT.

It's going to be over before, you know, okay, going to be over eventually. You can do this. You can do this.

Want this moment over through IT, through IT.

I remember yelling or kind of .

making like a and really like .

looking and confusion at my nurse, the attending nurse, and her saying, you giving the most second legally give .

you SHE said that the maximum that she's allowed to give me so SHE couldn't .

give me anything else. I'm almost certain that at one point they said that they've given me all of the paint medication that they could give me.

At one point they did say that I had maxed out. I couldn't have any more fat now ever said. And I was like, how is this possible? Is that even like how my feeling? How do people go through this? I can feel that.

Like, I could feel that I don't even know how to describe that. Like, you can just feel them inside of there. You know, as a woman, we've all been through things, you know with those kind of doctors and stuff, but like this is just a pain. It's like hard to even explain .

what IT elling. This is hard to do. But could you describe the pain that you felt?

cash.

I IT felt like someone was like a rippling something from the inside of your body .

yeah which is what they .

are doing yeah that's what I feel like. Yeah yeah yeah .

i'm sorry um but but I I remember almost .

immediately thinking um or almost daydreaming in that that like the attending nurse had a one tube going from my ivy into my ARM and another tube going from my I V enter her pocket like IT occurred to me almost immediately that the nurse was still in the sentiment and I remember telling .

my friends you know .

after the procedure my friends who were aware of what I was going through but who are also colleagues at yale in addiction research I remember telling them like the nurses still in because IT seems so obvious to me and inventions the most diverted drug and medical settings it's like a now major driver of the obviate crisis and IT was just really easy to imagine that someone with access to poorly controlled file .

would be abusing IT um that's so fascinating that that's the image that raised itself up for you because IT is so evocative like because IT is so avocational, for example, like and also because IT was true, a nurse of the clinic was stealing federal, not Katie's nurse, not the tube in the pocket, but a nurse of the clinic was stealing, venal in replacing IT with sAiling. SHE did so undetected for months, which meant patients weren't getting federal in their ibs. They were getting salt water instead.

Drug addicted former nurse is sentenced for a crime that caused unbearable pain to dozens of women, nestle drugs and then replace them with sAiling solution. Nurse SHE swapped out anathema drugs for salt water, causing excruciating pain to women during infertility treatments. IT horrible .

story about the extremes of fertility they are struggling with drug addiction took to get her fix.

A federal .

investigation determined that as many as two hundred patients may have been victims of the substitution over five months in twenty twenty. Lawyers for some of the patients believe the real number is higher, and this went on for longer. I've talked to a dozen patients who believe there were victims of this.

Eleven of them are plaintives in a lawsuit against yale, and their lawyers were present when we spoke. When I started doing these interviews, I was struck by the echoes in these women stories to me that sounded like a course of women saying something is wrong here again and again, the patients wondered how the clinic could have failed to detect this. And the conversations I was having made me wonder that too.

And then I became talking to other people, staffers who'd been there, and I learned about what went on behind the scenes. The staffers I spoke to were horrified by what the patients had experienced. They were grabbing with their own questions about how this had happened, about what had gonna miss.

The patients didn't know why they were in pain for. Doctors didn't know either. And in the absence of information about the true cause of the pain, people came up with stories to explain IT.

The patient's constructed stories about why they felt pain. Staffers at the clinic came up with theories, too. Eventually, the nurse would tell her own story about the pain, which would launch a whole new set of stories.

The ones, or friends and family would come up with the one that would get argued in court, the one yield would tell. And all of these stories revealed something about women's pain, how it's tolerated, interpreted, accounted for or minimized. Infertility treatment, you evaluate the outcomes by whether you wind up with a baby, that's the metric by which success is measured that all went well.

If you leave with a live birth, the outcomes here are a lot more complicated for everyone from serial productions in the new york times. I'm Susan, and this is the retrieval. This is episode one. The patients.

Hey, it's john chase and mara from wirecutters, the product recommendation service from the new york times. Murray IT is gift giving time. What's an easy get for someone like under fifty box in our gifts, under fifty list? I really love this water color set from japan. These beautiful, beautiful colors is something that kids can do, adults can do. I ve, for all of wirecutters ideas and recommendations, head to N Y times dot com slash holiday guide.

When the retrieval is over, the women are wheeled out to the recovery room. And one of the first things that happens is that they try to come up with an explanation for their pain.

They put you into the recovery room, and that's where you meet with whoever you were with. And I just remember that when I had my phone back and I was texting my sister in law because SHE was very confident for all of this having been through that and and he was just replying like, oh my god, how could you would you mean you felt everything and i'm like, I I know is just like, you know, just explaining to her and like, I don't know what's wrong like so and I even one of the text I said, I said I think i'm immunity final because like I was like I don't think IT works on me.

I'm not sensitive defending as a common theory.

And I remember when the procedure was done, you know my family sort of we have a family text that's ongoing in and I just remember taxing them that know it's hard to believe that we have a fant all epidemic where people are addicted because I did nothing for me.

Not all of the women were alert during their procedures somewhere more deeply sedated. They were so out of IT during the retrieval that they don't really remember IT or only kind of the pain hits when .

they come to IT was bad instantly and IT shouldn't really be bad instantly. Like you shouldn't wake up and being like horrific, like a nightmarish pain. But I woke up and I was, I mean, like IT felt like someone had been inside me and like, gutted me yeah. If I was like a godded feeling, he was like someone had been inside me, scraped to me. Hello, IT was burning in way.

Is more confusing for the wake up later patients. They're not matching each step of pain to the needle on the screen. IT hurts a lot, but is less explicable. And because of that.

scarier you know, your mind just goes to the worst possible place is like, you know, i'm thinking and is in my bleeding, you know and and my bleeding internally is this is like a pain, is Normally a pain, is the sign is protective, right? IT tells you something thing is wrong.

There's a lot of uncertainty in the recovery room in elevated blood pressure, a nurse running around to get ginger ail, a doctor coming by to say there are fewer eggs than we expected. Are you sure you only want us to fertilize half of them? It's all is very overwhelming and on top of IT, some of the women feel like they're being rushed out of the clinic. Julia is one of them.

I remember vomiting. They were giving me some some fluids. I was um very uncomfortable. Um there was no way I could walk the, put me in a wheelchair and wheel me out. And I just, I just, I just had this feeling like this is not, this is not right.

Julia is thirty one years old and already a college professor. This morning, when her husband drove to the clinic, SHE been frantic. There was work on a bridge near their house and they got stuck.

There's only a short window to achieve the eggs before you evaluate them. And Julia was worried you would miss IT. When SHE arrived at the clinic, SHE felt a huge relief, like we made IT both.

We made IT on time, and we made IT this day. Now she's feeling something he never expected at home. He goes upstairs and gets into bed.

I fell asleep for a little while, and then I woke up and I was nervous. I had a, we had a babysitter here watching my daughter and I just know you wake up you like all my god I who's with my kid I need to um and I walked a few steps to try and go down the stairs and I realized I really had gone too far from the bed by this point the pain was excruciating I would say um and I turned to go back to lay down in my bed again and I I mean I don't remember this but I I blacked out or passed out um and I woke up on the floor um um and my my my I kind of bust my lip.

Julia calls the clinic and they tell her that he should go to the E. R. She's in so much pain that you can't bend enough to get into a car.

An ambuLance is is called. And when Julia get to the hospital, they check her out. The retrieval is a safe procedure, but things can go wrong.

You're always constantly late. A majority can get punctured, but none of the obvious things are wrong, and nobody can explain what is back home. Over the weekend, Julia calls the on call doctor at the clinic multiple times.

By sunday, I sort of got the sense I was annoying him.

Julia keeps waiting for a call from her official doctor by tuesday. SHE still hasn't heard from him.

He was impossible for me to understand how he hadn't called me by this point but I called his office on tuesday, uh basically you know saying I need to talk to you um I wrote I wrote down what he said and I i've kept this note since that time he said he was not alarmed, but perplexed and surprised at my experience um those words, I guess ring pretty holo uh now right um knowing that there was a pattern of of many women who had extreme inexplicable pain after the agra trial.

What did you make of that language like that in the moment? Perplexed .

and surprised .

IT was.

I mean. I guess I. I, I, I, I felt crazy. I mean, I I, I felt, I mean, you're by this point, i'm asking myself like, am I being difficult?

I am, I am, I am, I I mean, you you just question your sense of self, like your your ability to a assess your situation rationally, which is very disconcerting when that happens because at least at the end of the day, you have that right, you go you start thinking about your whole life, right? Like i'm a pretty high energy person like I take care of a todder er I have A P H D. I have a job like I I run marathon's in my free time.

Like i'm i'm not, you know like you have all these parts of your life that make you feel like that give you this sense of like who you are and then I just felt like like they were trading me like I was like not you know for still you know are being in pain and just having a what I would call a difficult time you know I just left the office. I mean crying, you know um I just felt like like nobody nobody cares. That's the way I would describe how I felt in the days after. Like nobody gives a crap that that this was so hard for me.

In the days after the retrieval, other patients live out versions of the same story. They also call the clinic. They ask, is this Normal?

They say, thailand all isn't helping at home. They're laid up on the couch. They can pick up their towler. They wonder if they really should have scheduled themselves for a shift the next day.

Not all staffers at the clinic are dismissive, but even when they respond with concern, there aren't any real answers. Some of these conversations take place days after the procedure, like IT follow ups to talk about next steps.

You didn't really talk to the office until they in five or day six, which is when I found out that none of the eggs had survived. None we're healthy enough to go to testing and we had to talk about moving forward. And um that's when I really express my sort of shock that the procedure was as painful as IT was and talked about you know if there were other pain management protocols that could be considered at that point and I .

was told .

in that you know that was the best pain medication that was was available and my doctor proscribed me um an anxiety medication to take before the next procedure and I remember saying to my husband.

you know I think .

it's strange because i'm not anxious about a medical procedure yeah you know the pain IT was severe pain not an anxiety about going into IT.

The next time that I saw my doctor, he asked me how the procedure went and I said IT was really, really painful and he was kind of like bit a little bit concerned but then he just didn't say anything after that is so I was like, okay, I guess. And this was my first time doing IT, so I didn't know any Better. So I was like, okay, I guess, suppose be painful.

Other women are talking about what happened with family and friends.

So at that point I had talked to a couple of family members who had done were trivial and I felt even horse 年 2， there's nothing like feeling shame from like another female and an unintentional too you know.

like that just .

seems weird because, you know, I was wheel back there and joked with the staff and then fell asleep in and woke up and was fine. And that seemed to be the general consensus between procedures at a different clinics that, oh yeah, I was kind of alert, but I didn't feel anything that was really no big deal like the shots ahead of time were way worse than the actual procedure. And I started shutting down after hearing most stories that this was on me, like I something wasn't right with my tolerance and my ability, I can do this.

The women are already settling on their stories about what happened to them. I'm immune finial. It's my fault.

It's supposed to be painful. The clinic tells patients that they may experience mild discomfort, but now some of them have. We calibrated their expectations, including lyn, who will have eight retrieval at the clinic. All of them will cause her exercise pain.

You know, again here about I, V, F, and how to of of a process IT is mentally and physically. And you know, I I just thought, this is what I have to do. This is what I have to do and sort of just thought, this is what women go through.

Yield declined to offer information about how reports of pain were addressed at the clinic or to answer any other questions. Episode one of the retrieval continues after the break.

Of the twelve patients I spoke to, most are White. The one black woman in the group was often the only black woman in the clinic ating room. Everyone in the group identified as a woman, while couple of them we're pursuing pregNancy for the first time.

As they near red forty. Most did not fit that stereotype. Most were married to men, one to a woman. That patient would provide the eggs, and her wife would Carry the pregNancy. Her wife presents more steel, typically masculine, doesn't wear them as clothing.

And the first family were like, are you sure you want to do IT this way? Yes, they were sure. One was doing this on her own at forty one, after the end of a long relationship.

Another left her boyfriend part way through the process and then fell in love with the new guy at the office. Mom was born iran and came to the U. S.

As a refugee. Another group in jamaa, one had what he described as a horrible childhood. SHE essentially had to raise her herself, another along to have a second baby because he was so close to all of her siblings.

One had type one diabetes and was used to everyone always attributing all medical issues to, oh, with your diabetes. All of them worked special teacher, an accountant at a maritime firm, and lecture at yale in the department of american studies. Her name is laya.

Her scholarship encompasses a variety of subjects, exile and migration. She's the patient who came to the U. S. As a refugee from iran. And gender from the beginning of her treatment lay allocated her experience within a context of assumptions about women patients that they are unreliable, narrators of their own symptoms, that they are anxious, exaggerating.

But I remember the first time I wanted there to get ready for the ultra on there was blood on the floor um from a previous person entering and I I have to tell you IT was as ominous as science fuck income. And I just remember me an navid was with me, I think was navid with me or I subsequence. Oh no.

He couldn't go inside. He was waiting in the car. My husson was waiting in the car.

I was just shaking. I was like, this isn't good. I mean, I was I was like, you walk in and I was like, there's blood. You guys left blood over what is going on here. Did you did you say anything?

Like did you say that?

But here's the thing, and this is where begins, is you are treated like a historical woman from the second you are in there. So you already know. And like, as you know, like a person whom I like, I study this stuff, I teach this stuff, and you're there and you're like, all this, this, this is actually good happening right now. Here comes like florida patient, the historical woman whose childless and angry and hormonal and terrified and bitch and mean and we're that's how we're going na treat .

her hysteria. A comes from the greek word for uterus, ancient explanations for IT involved in empty uterus. A woman was hysterically because her uterus was not full unanchored. The uterus roved through the body, which was what made women sick and crazy. To fix historia, you really needed to fill that uterus up.

I like, so with the blood. I remember being like, there's blood on the floor. You know, I was really upset and then I, okay, okay, I mean, it's, you know, I I IT turn right back on me.

And I remember one of the nurses was like, okay, well, you can calm down, you. I was told to calm down. And I mean, anyone, they're doing the ultra sounds, of course, they someone's doing a transvaal ultra sound.

So there's literally like this stick that's inside of you and they're moving IT around. And if you crack, okay, it'll just be like another it's just another second. It's okay, just be patient. So you're constantly over emphasizing or over dramatizing what what's happening. It's not that big of a deal.

They I felt like her doctor wasn't listening to her. SHE also didn't trust her assigned nurse then kim ly is first retrieve SHE felt her pain wasn't taken seriously by anyone SHE says they all blew her off. Lao wasn't happy with her treatment, but he decided to continue.

Here I was, I thought I felt that I was alarmed by IT, but I kept going because I wanted to have a baby.

Blair asked for a new doctor. He oversaw her next cycle, and soon he went in for another retrieval.

Right after you're in that room, the N. S. Else came up to me and he said, you know what? You you are waking up.

You are waking up. We have to give you some more mad. You know, you are waking up. So again, you your body, you are nervous, you are agitated, you burdened us, you're kind of uncontrollable body put us in a position where we actually had to give you more drugs. You, you, you were waking up, so we had to give you more final.

And I was like, oh, but again, to them, to them, i'm this woman who's already like on edge. I already left the doctor because I didn't like the doctor. So the other physicians and the other nurse is all know this about me. I am a kind of already unruly, perhaps entitled, overly kind of needy woman who's just really angry that SHE doesn't have a baby.

There's a baLance you have to strike as a woman patient. You have to complain just the right amount to be taken seriously, but not so much that you seem shrill still, your pain is more likely to be underestimated than man's. Black women are more likely to have their pain ignored no matter what they do.

All of this we know from the literature and also from life. In my life, i've been the kind of patient where, if i've ever spoken up, I felt like I need to be obsequious later to protect myself. That is what I felt I needed to perform.

Layer knew sheet, need to perform a whole range of things in order to get help. Stern, dosewell, smart, stupid, agreeable. And now on a journey in the recovery room, layer became an observer.

SHE would remember what was happening. SHE would write about this one day. SHE tuned into the language, into the emphasis that, to her, seem so interesting and fucked up into the syntax that seemed to place the blame on her body.

But at the same time, lay had also internalized the narrative that her body was to blame. Her body was inadequate, deficient. That was why he was here.

Her body had had miscarriages. Her body didn't make enough eggs. Her body couldn't CoOperate long enough to get through a critical procedure.

Oh god, my body like, here, here goes again. Not only can I not like, have a baby, I also can even like, just lay still with the right amount of final in this moment.

And throughout her treatment layer was simultaneously, the writer saying, I can name what's happening here. And the patient saying, how could I have let this happen? Other women occupy their own versions of this position.

Their professional identities offered them one kind of story about these events. Their identities as patients directed them to another. Several of them had an area of expertise that was directly applicable here in a way that is kind of uncanny.

For example, there are multiple patients who work in health care, including one whose design systems for the safe storage of medications. There's an earth esthetics SHE thought the anesthesia was the one part of futility treatment SHE won't have to worry about and of course, there's the addiction researcher kd, who had the prophetic tic fantasy. What's unique about you is that not only did you know something was wrong, you knew exactly what was wrong.

I did you .

still you constructed, yes, like this other nearby .

to explain IT.

Yes, like other patients, kai head expertise that gave her knowledge, but SHE others pushed the technology inside. They decided not to know what they knew. In order to keep going. I wanted Katie delay out the path to that cognitive dissident. I wanted her to explain exactly how he got from one story to the other.

I mean, you know, as i've told you, like I came out of that procedure and I immediately I remember immediately texting my friends who are also colleagues and addiction research. Yl, like the nurse stealing the fans IT just seemed so obvious. Um but then you know then you you sort of come out of the I remember just coming out of the shock and and recovering from the procedure and things just go on you know I um no one is addressing the fact that I was sober during the procedure and I I remember violently shaking and recovery from like the shock.

I don't know that that's related to having the procedure with or without functional, but but that's how my body responded and my nurse was there and I remember her saying I think something like I think it's I think IT was so painful because we got so many eggs. And so it's just sort of this like positive kind of false narrative about what had happened. And so then, you know, I think I coped by coming up with an alternate explanation, which was that I do remember waking up during my having my wisdom teeth being pulled when I was a kid to the nursing and shit, shit and then, you know, giving me more drugs, putting me back under.

So you know, the other explanation for me was that maybe i'm not sensitive to certain obvious, you know and I I remember also that kind of became my narrative with, you know, my friend and colleagues kind of remember me sort of switching to that narrative and saying like, well, maybe you you're not sensitive defensioner. So I started to kind of tell just tell myself a story about my pain. Just try to understand, you know, it's it's a way of just understanding my experience and thinking, yeah, maybe this is what happened.

The story becomes a way not only to explain pain, but to cope with IT. A way to not only make sense of the pain, but to manage IT, to tamp IT down, get through IT. In this way, the story becomes the medicine that the patients weren't given.

The women gear up for second, third retrieval. They change their diets. They cut chemicals out of their home. They read the books the nurses recommend, or they get ready for embro transfers.

They make reservations at a hotel in town so that they won't have to drive home over a bumpy road. Despite these efforts, some of the women misCarry. One woman wakes up about ten days after her embryo transfer with some spotting.

Don't think anything of that yet. A nurse reassures her, but the pregNancy test comes back negative. When do you think you might want to get started again? Her doctor asks her a virtual will follow appointment.

I am not ready. The patient says he closes the teller health. And that's the last time we talked to the doctor.

SHE never goes back to that clinic. SHE stopped fertility treatment and doesn't know when or if he will ever resume IT. SHE never wants to go through an integrator of vel again.

Fertility treatment doesn't always result in a baby. It's not just giving yourself shots that's hard. It's the cycle of hope and loss.

I just clAmbers you. And the longer you stay in IT, the more the drugs mess with your head. It's called the gloomy crazy for a reason, one of the women tells me.

And the money, always the money. If your insurance covers this, I probably only covers a few cycles. They're so much pressure on each one.

Once you have to pay out of parked, you're talking maybe fifteen caver one cycle, and that's the low end. Some of the women are keeping their treatment secret. One of them can even tell her own mother.

It's hard. It's hard to begin with. Even without this extra layer has been added onto this. Now, the pain and the fear of more of IT, the first time I went .

in clues thinking you're not going to feel the thing. So I think this the second time, I had a lot more anxiety.

Laura doesn't get as many eggs as he hoped for. The first time around, it's urgent that he started cancer treatment and the doctors accelerate her cycle. Her second retrieval is scheduled for barely more than two weeks. After her first that morning, Lauren's mother drives to the clinic and sits in the waiting room while Laura goes back for the procedure.

And I was shocked. I was shocked again that I was the same situation. I'm trusting my hips and telling me like, why do we speaking to them?

And I just like, I feel everything you're doing. And that was when I did. I remember actually saying to them I could drive myself home right now i'm that .

alert in the recovery room. Lora gets her phone back and just like last time, text her sister in law. Then SHE sees her mom. SHE tells them both how much pain she's in. So my sir.

right away was like, oh my god, I cannot believe you felt that again. But my mom, or SHE, just so IT, was IT hard because, you know, he had seen you go through so much as I was with the cancer. You know, any mother, as they live watching their daughter, go through that.

And then for me to dollar, you know, this was supposed to be a sensual moment because we're preserving my futility and i'm sorry. And third, like you see, that is all for to see me in pain, you know. You know, I know it's just like, we'll think, god, I think this was the last time I had to do that, you know, yes.

so what did the two of you .

do like .

the rest of that day? And SHE drive you home.

He has SHE drove me home and SHE stayed with me um because he had already been staying with me a lot you know during the day you know after my surgery because I couldn't even at that point, I still was an allowed to lift more than five pounds so because I was still recovering from the other surgeries so yes, he was with me and you know baby lunch comforted me and just, you know we are like OK.

So now we just go back to waiting and you know hoping we get a good number and you know I just moved on from IT because I faced many more surgeries at the ear as well. So know I kind of had to just switch back into, you know, a survival mood would like, okay, but now we just battle the next thing. So 啊。

in the other surgeries you had like cancer related surgeries, like what were your experiences of pain? Like it's actually .

interesting that you bring that up because when I did have my double meat to me, I was hospitalized. I think I was in for a day or two days and um strAngely enough, the nurse the nightmare forgot to give me morphine so I actually was awake and in pain the entire night and I have glued logy so they couldn't feed me anything because the kitchen was closed.

So I spent the entire night like bombing because they couldn't they were trying to give you like persecution or something. And so I know what pain feels like if you know, i've whatever. And the next morning the texture goes, I don't understand why you didn't give IT to you was in the order.

And I had a really Young nurse, whatever. This is completely unrelated that but you know I know what pain feels like i've been through IT and then when I was hospitalized at Christmas, that's funny that like that you bring that up because my sister that actually had pointed out SHE goes, remember when you kept telling me you were immune? SHE goes, when I did a search on my phone, I guess you can, she's really save you. You can type in like final in text messages and they'll bring up every conversation.

SHE goes, I actually found one from when you were hospitalized at Christmas, saying that you were on that on I guess he had sent me a picture of her Christmas tree and I had me to comment like, oh my god, did your housework n down and SHE was just like, and he was like, what you talking about and I said, I don't know, the nurse just gave me fat and all and so SHE goes, look, look, so IT does work on you lah. Wow, you know, and this was a month prior and I did that didn't even dawn on me like, oh my god so but when IT came time for the other thing, I was just like, I he must not work on me because, you know, I just felt like nobody had heard what I was saying. So I just didn't exist.

IT was in my head, you know, so, yeah, so I know I was I foolish because I didn't like dispute more. Maybe not I I don't know, but like I just I believe them. You trust them.

Months pass, some of the women get pregnant. Others are still trying. Some of them were still showing up at that clinic for blood rows when they open their mailboxes in december twenty twenty.

Christmas was on a friday of twenty twenty, and the mall arrived on thursday with Christmas eef, and I was busy and I just thought i'm just not i'm not going to a go get the mail today 啊。 And I waited until a monday, the twenty eighth, and now IT was a nice day when outside I got the meal and know, I got this letter.

got this letter in the mail. It's nothing fancy. It's yell envelope. I'm assuming it's a bill. Bills never stopped coming with us.

What you get so much when you work at yale also you just get like yell emblazon mail until you're like, go okay, whatever. IT was like this thin thing and I was like, oh, they change locations or something. It's like, this is not important.

Instead of just setting in the side, I happen to open IT. And I was furious and .

I said, your Kathy garson, i'm writing you. I'm writing to you in my role as director of ye reproductive enterkin ology and infertility to let you know that we have learned of an event that may have involved your care.

that theyve become aware that that the the nurse was switching out the function of the salian .

a few weeks ago. We learned that on multiple occasions, a yale fertility center nurse replaced frontino, a routinely used narcotic medication, with a Normal salt solution ceiling in some medication files. As a result, some patients may have received saline instead of the intended narcotic medication during their procedures. Well, there's no reason to believe that this event has had any negative effect on your health or the outcome of the care that you received. We believe that you should be informed.

They make this stupid comment in the letter that there was no harm .

done from .

this happening. I I don't know if how was home where I called her and I was like, bullshit. No harm done.

Don't send me a letter and tell me that we're confident no one's you know, outcomes were affected by this. I know my outcomes were affected by this. I know what I enjoy instant went through, but yell wasn't gonna help me.

They didn't think there was harm. They didn't think IT was a problem. You know that I was the most, honestly, I think was one of the most disrespectful ways they probably could have notified any of us that IT had happened that, you know, oh, we have this little breach and you're fine. No bigger. Go out today.

You again, no one reached out to talk with us or to see what we experienced as patients. S, my only communication about IT was through the letter and that still to this day.

And yet in addition to your, there's also a indication when they learn the news, however, they learn IT the women texter twin sister or run inside of their husband or wheat in their kitchen.

I was mind blowing immediately called my mother. I immediately call my sister alone. I'm like, h like, I don't know something that just hit. Like.

IT all makes sense now. And I was like, okay, IT all makes sense. IT was almost a relief of relief to know, like, you know, i'm not crazy.

There's not thinking wrong with my party. I don't have something like blocking option ads. Are you where you know my bodies wrong and doesn't react to medicine?

And but IT also shows how much they ignored my please for help and saying like you like, no, nobody believed me and so in the center that was like relief, you know, just knowing that what I felt .

IT was real. But there's more the letter continues the law enforcement .

investigation and our own review have found no reason to believe that you are exposed to an infection due to this event. Even so, we can appreciate you may want further reassurance, and if you wish, we will arrange you to be tested for a group of blood born infections at no charge.

And I was like.

what a fuck.

You know those words not alarm but perplex and surprised, came back to me, right and you just feel like um so .

completely let .

down a by this institution that supposed to make you feel safe and and I mean I mean to keep you safe institution that's supposed to keep you safe, right? That was gone. But maybe the .

most remarkable thing about the letter is the way addresses pain. IT seems to be saying you did not feel what you felt. I also want .

to assure you that the fertility center routinely uses a combination of pain medications during procedures. We closely monitor patients for signs of discomfort during every procedure and adjust medications or add medications as needed. In this way, we can be confident that our patients stay comfortable even if one medication is not working well. I don't believe that accurately .

describes .

my experience. And then he goes on to say, if you have any questions or one of blood test, you know, here, so you can call .

the women put the letter on the counter in shock. For months they've been constructing their own stories about what happened to them. Now they have yellow story, which is that this is barely a story at all. The questions the patients have been asking, how long have a new focus?

You know, as soon as I have received that letter, like how does this happen, you know, and how does that happen at yellow hospital system with such a great reputation? And how did that happen for so long, so many things had to go wrong? You know, for this to happen as long as I did.

how does an entire facility let this happen? Who trained them? Who thought this was okay?

I get sent home with, you know, I get packages in the mail with sharp middle containers and strict instructions and alcohol swab. And it's crazy protocol that I expected to do at home. They make you double check.

Things are puncture Marks. Did I really spend more time following directions at home for hormone shots? Where were they now? I think my .

immediate reaction was, how could this happen a year? Like why wasn't that Better system in place to prevent IT or detected when IT was happening and respond? why? Why wasn't our pain? Listen to the .

women wondered about the system that failed them, but there's something very intimate and human that they're wondering about. Two.

we were notified that IT was a nurse. We didn't have the name of the nurse in that original letter.

And so it's sort of you know racing through your mind like, well, which nurse, because you build such a strong relationship with these people and you see them so often and you trust them and you know build a relationship and so you're thinking, like, well, which nars could this ban? And then you you're showing up the, you know and okay, who's not here anymore? Who's gone? And just trying to figure .

out who IT was. The patients know what happened. They're about to find out who did IT. That's next.

The retrieval is produced by me in Laura star cheskin. Laura edited the series with editing in producing help from july snyder, additional editing by Mickey mek, kai engle and I rog lass research, in fact checking by ben fAilin and kate in love three provisions sound design and mixing by fb wing with production help from a shell naval original music by color alone and music mixing by toma poli in a tuba is a supervising producer for serial productions at the new york times. Our standards editor Susan westling legal review by dana Green art direction from public a delkin producing help from jeffrey maranda Kelly do RNA on burri desire I avoca and initial money sam donc is the assistant managing editor, special thanks to doctor my self seaters calvin hawker, nashua Kelly silver and doctor meggy smith. The retrieval is a production of serial productions and the new york times.