Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, their serial listeners. It's serra ic. I'm going to ask you right now to stop what you're doing and instead take a second to search on your podcast APP for a show called the retrieval.
It's our newest released from serial productions, and I am confident you're onna love IT. It's hosted by Susan burton, who has been a long time producer at our sister show this american life. Susan's written and produced ground breaking stories, especially about women, and this new show, the retrieval, is about what went wrong when a bunch of women sought treatment at a fertility clinic yielding university.
IT is shocking what happened to them. But he was reporting is so thero and so thoughtful that she's able to push beyond the fascinating plot and ask big questions about how we are conditioned to deal with women's pain. Here's a trailer for the show, and please do not forget to go look for the retrieval where every you listen your podcasts.
The women are seeking fertility treatment for a variety of reasons. They've had a couple misCarries in their pushing forty. They don't have philopena tubes or they need firm. All of them wind up at the fertility clinic, at yale university.
They meet their doctors, get the info, start giving themselves the shots, and eventually they get to the day they've been waiting for the day of the first egg retrieval, 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.
They started the procedure. And, you know, I was just sort of taken by surprise, not expect the exercise pain. My blood pressure started going up. I was sweating profusely and telling them 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, you is not making a .
difference I remember yelling or kind of making .
like ah and really .
like looking in confusion at my nurse, the attending nurse and hers saying, you know i'm giving the most second legally give .
you SHE said that the maximum m that she's allowed to give me so SHE couldn't give me .
anything else at one point they did say that I D maxed out. I couldn't have any more fat. No ver said. And how was like, how is this possible?
Like how that even how my feeling?
How do people go through this? I remember .
like frosting my hips of saying.
I feel everything .
I don't know.
What would you going to do? know? I wanted the procedure down and I just let .
that happen and I prick i'm awake.
The patients didn't know why they were in pain. Their doctors didn't know either. And in the absence of information about the pain, people came up with stories to explain IT the patient's constructed stories.
Staff ers at the clinic came up with theories, too. Eventually, a nurse will tell her own story about the pain. As with yale, the yale .
fertility clinic is not one doctor, and a back ali is an entire institution behind, adds this reputation. How do they not see that this is happening? Am I being difficult? I mean, you you just question your sense of self.
You are treated like a historical woman from the second you ark.
And when nobody believed.
I felt crazy.
Infertility treatment, you evaluate the outcome by whether you wind up with a baby. The outcomes here are a lot more .
complicated for everyone.
Are you kidding that I lost this?
I can always feel like a bomb.
B, i'll say no harm done.
There's no way I can ever look at this really the same way .
from serial productions and the new york times. I'm Susan burton. This is the retrieval.
That's the retrieval. The first episode comes out june twenty nights. Find IT whatever you listen to your podcast.