I recently finished listening to the unsettling podcast, THE RETRIEVALS. It tells the story of how a nurse at a prestigious US fertility clinic spent years stealing opioids meant for patients undergoing egg retrieval procedures and replacing those drugs with saline. Dozens of women underwent the painful retrieval procedure completely awake, and able to feel everything. To give some indication of how insane that is, for my egg retrieval (and presumably those of other fertility patients in South Africa), I was given pain medication and I was knocked out using propofol. That’s an indication not only of how painful the procedure can be, but also how incredibly delicate. It is the moment at which the ova that have been steadily developing with the assistance of all those meds are extracted by your doctor who is guided by an ultrasound to carefully position a large hollow needle through the walls of your uterus into your ovaries. It hurts but you have to be still for it. I cannot begin to imagine the agony these women experienced.

The podcast chronicles the reverberations of the abuse these patients endured, including the very upsetting absence of real consequences or punishment for the nurse. Of all of the chapters of this story, the most devastating, for me, was the one in which this nurse’s story is told (episode 3). Her defense was built around her experiences in an abusive marriage, and the trauma of co-parenting with her abusive ex. She tells about escalating anxiety and the addiction that followed. Her breaking point, and consequently the crux of her defense, is her fear for her children and the recklessness with which her ex parents them. She augments her identity as a devoted and anxious mother by revealing in court, during sentencing, that like her victims, she too underwent IVF.

When you’re going through fertility treatments, everyone assumes you’re a little crazy.

To an extent, the assumption is not unwarranted. You’re pumped full of hormones and medications designed to reengineer your body’s rhythms. You’re probably spending a lot of money that you won’t get back from medical aid or tax rebates. And you’re not pregnant, yet. The assumption is that this pressure cooker of factors might have an effect on your mental health is a realistic one. And yet. It is a barely invisible undercurrent that threatens to overtake every interaction you have with the professionals entrusted with your care. Every time I approached my doctor with questions and concerns, I would be sure to project exaggerated levity and competence: I am TOGETHER. I am OKAY. Yes, I am crazy but NOT REALLY. In turn, she would address me gently, and begin her answers by reminding me that I could not be expected to be completely objective and rational, given the meds, the money and the empty uterus. After a while, you start to second guess yourself and you stop raising the concerns. You save your voice for the big stuff – a first trimester bleed, ovarian torsion. This nurse, having operated as a caregiver and a patient, probably knew this better than anyone. She understood that when woman after woman after woman complained about pain and struggled through painful retrievals, they would be drowned out by the assumptions about their mental health. She knew this and she counted on it and she used it against these women for years. What breathtaking cruelty.

My son is 8 and he is the love of my life. And I still struggle with the effects of IVF on my body and mind. Listening to those women describe it all – the shots, the scans, the blood draws, the pain – took me back instantly. It was not easy listening, but I stayed. At the end of the day, an isolating experience like IVF needs to be witnessed. Even when it goes well. You need people who see you to see that experience. It can be a hard ask when the outcome of the experience is a loved and cherished child. How do you talk about the regret and trauma without somehow tainting your motherhood experience by association? I don’t have an answer, but I am almost certain that not talking about it isn’t it. So it’s important to hear these stories. To witness.

There’s a lot of public discourse these days about how our bodies carry the effects of trauma. The body keeps the score, as they say. I don’t know what that means about who’s in competition and who might win or lose, but it feels necessary that we start actively reading the scores, acknowledging the cost. It’s the only way out of our isolation, and truly into our bodies.

Featured photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash