Speaker 1: Hi Heavyweight listeners. While the team is busy working on
Speaker 1: next week special episode, we don't want you flipping podcast stations,
Speaker 1: so we're bringing you something from our friends at Cereal
Speaker 1: and The New York Times. It's an episode from the
Speaker 1: podcast The Retrievals that we've been eager to share. It's
Speaker 1: about these women who went to the Yale Fertility Center
Speaker 1: for a procedure called an egg retrieval. For months, patient
Speaker 1: after patient complained that they were experiencing excruciating pain during
Speaker 1: the procedure, like the anesthesia they were given didn't work
Speaker 1: at all, But time after time, these women were essentially
Speaker 1: brushed off until finally everyone found out what was really
Speaker 1: going on. It's a gripping story that goes to places
Speaker 1: you completely will not expect, places that are both deeply
Speaker 1: personal and also point to larger structural failures in the
Speaker 1: world of healthcare. Susan Burton, the reporter of the story,
Speaker 1: does an incredible job delicately guiding you through shifting sympathies
Speaker 1: and the complexities of the case. We've got episode one
Speaker 1: for you, but I'm sure, like me, you're going to
Speaker 1: want to tear through the entire set series. The Retrievals
Speaker 1: Episode one coming up right after the break.
Speaker 2: The women are seeking fertility treatment for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 2: They've had a couple of miscarriages and they're pushing forty,
Speaker 2: they don't have fallopian tubes, or they need sperm. One
Speaker 2: woman has a diagnosis that's like a metaphor from feminist
Speaker 2: sci fi, a uterus with a single horn like a unicorn.
Speaker 2: All of them wind up at the fertility clinic at
Speaker 2: Yale University. A couple of the women choose this clinic
Speaker 2: because they work at Yale, and that's what the Yale
Speaker 2: health plan covers. Others go to Yale and the recommendation
Speaker 2: of their doctors. But in Connecticut, you don't even really
Speaker 2: need the recommendation. Yale Medicine it's a blue chip medical brand.
Speaker 3: You know, Yale's just a huge name, and you just
Speaker 3: think anything that has anything to do with Yale is
Speaker 3: going to be, you know, the best of the best.
Speaker 4: It's really not close to our house. It's not where
Speaker 4: I would have gone, but we figured, you know, another
Speaker 4: doctor from another hospital said this is the best you
Speaker 4: can get, and you want, of course, you want that.
Speaker 5: To some of the women.
Speaker 2: The clinic seems to live up to its billing. They
Speaker 2: like their doctors feel cared for by them. That man
Speaker 2: is an angel, one of the women tells me. He
Speaker 2: is by far the best doctor I've ever had. Others
Speaker 2: are not happy at the clinic from the start. It's
Speaker 2: things like feeling like a number, or issues with communication.
Speaker 2: There's a lot to communicate. You don't know how hard
Speaker 2: fertility treatment is until you get into it, and once
Speaker 2: you start it in one place, it can be difficult
Speaker 2: to go somewhere else. So they talk themselves into staying.
Speaker 2: That's the first thing they go against their instincts and
Speaker 2: talk themselves into. The women drive to the clinic before
Speaker 2: work in the morning for blood draws, and then wait
Speaker 2: for the afternoon email from their nurse team. You really
Speaker 2: have to trust your nurse team, the women tells me.
Speaker 2: At this point she did. The nurse team gives instructions
Speaker 2: and the women give themselves shots. These shots contain hormones
Speaker 2: to stimulate the body to produce eggs. A side effect
Speaker 2: is emotional volatility. The wind is making me cry, one
Speaker 2: of the women says. But the thing is you have
Speaker 2: to stay calm, don't get stressed. It's so stressful. Trying
Speaker 2: not to get stressed. One woman uses a fertility meditation
Speaker 2: app called Expectful. She does her guided meditation on the beach.
Speaker 2: The app plays the sound of waves while the real
Speaker 2: waves heave in the background. It's absurd, but so much
Speaker 2: of this is absurd, including the money. There's all kinds
Speaker 2: of stuff that's not covered no matter what insurance you have. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: your ovaries enlarge and you get so bloated that your
Speaker 2: abdomen feels like bricks. And then finally you get to
Speaker 2: the day you've been waiting for, the day of the
Speaker 2: first egg retrieval, which is what it sounds like. The
Speaker 2: eggs are removed from the body and then fertilized or frozen,
Speaker 2: depending on what you're doing. How many eggs am I
Speaker 2: going to get? That is the big question. The more
Speaker 2: eggs you get, the better your chance of a healthy embryo,
Speaker 2: a viable pregnancy, a child. The day of the retrieval,
Speaker 2: the women arrive at the clinic. They check in on
Speaker 2: different mornings in different months and calendar years. None of
Speaker 2: them are here on the same day, but they will
Speaker 2: come out of the day with the same story. Laura
Speaker 2: arrives for her retrieval on a weekday morning in January
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. She checks in and changes into a gown.
Speaker 2: Two months ago, Laura was diagnosed with breast cancer, a
Speaker 2: double mestectomy followed, then an infection and additional surgeries. As
Speaker 2: soon as she freezes her eggs, she's going to start treatment.
Speaker 2: It's a lot. Laura is trying to put all of
Speaker 2: that to the side and just focus on the procedure ahead.
Speaker 6: I was excited, like, you know, trying to stay positive
Speaker 6: and just and I was just like, having been through
Speaker 6: so much just the month prior, I was like, this
Speaker 6: is going to be easy because I had been through
Speaker 6: so many surgeries and procedures. I was just like, you know,
Speaker 6: it's I know what this is like. I know what
Speaker 6: it's like to be under anesthesia or something and given
Speaker 6: medication so you don't feel things.
Speaker 2: The egg retrieval is a surgical procedure. A long needle
Speaker 2: is inserted into the vagina, then pierced through the vaginal
Speaker 2: wall and up into the ovary. Laura has been told
Speaker 2: in advance what drugs she will be getting during the procedure.
Speaker 6: Two drugs, fentanyl and another one my dalozam or is
Speaker 6: a lamb, and I believe that one's to induce sleepiness.
Speaker 2: Together, these two drugs offer what's often called moderate sedation. Basically,
Speaker 2: the fentanyl takes away pain and the medazolam relaxes you.
Speaker 2: Some people get drowsy with this combination, others remain alert.
Speaker 2: The use of fentanyl surprises some of the women. One
Speaker 2: of them, Defender, has seen a lot of clients messed
Speaker 2: up by fentanyl, and for a second she's worried. Another woman, Katie,
Speaker 2: a neuroscientist at Yale, feels a spark of interest.
Speaker 7: And in fact, you know, just being someone who studies
Speaker 7: addiction and studies some opioid use disorder and as a
Speaker 7: curious person. I remember the morning of thinking like, okay,
Speaker 7: this will be interesting. I've never tried ventanyl before, and
Speaker 7: so I expected to go in and have twilight anesthesia,
Speaker 7: you know, not full anesthesia, but not feel anything.
Speaker 2: The women complete the last steps before the procedure, get
Speaker 2: an IVY, go over some papers, if their partners came
Speaker 2: back with them. Now their partners say goodbye, and then
Speaker 2: it is time the women tell what happens next.
Speaker 6: I walked myself into the procedure room because you get
Speaker 6: rolled out afterwards. But you don't have any medication in you.
Speaker 6: You're just kind of hooked up to the ivy poll.
Speaker 6: And I walked into there and you you know, you
Speaker 6: get into the on the chair or table, whatever they
Speaker 6: call it, and that's from there. They said you're not
Speaker 6: going to feel anything, and they couldn't, you know, they
Speaker 6: explained everything that was going to happen.
Speaker 8: They started the procedure, and you know, I was just
Speaker 8: sort of taken by surprise, not expecting the excruciating pain
Speaker 8: and just letting them know that, you know, I don't
Speaker 8: think the pain medication is doing anything. You know, I
Speaker 8: can it really feels like you're stabbing the needle.
Speaker 9: I felt everything. It's literally your most intimate parts of
Speaker 9: your body.
Speaker 10: They're using these long needles, and there's also a screen
Speaker 10: so I can watch what they're doing, and I couldn't.
Speaker 10: I had to try and look away because literally each
Speaker 10: needle appears you feel.
Speaker 8: As we were moving along, it was my blood pressure
Speaker 8: started going up. I was sweating profusely and telling them,
Speaker 8: you know, I was just in and too much pain
Speaker 8: that they had to stop. At that point, I remember
Speaker 8: them giving me more of the pain medication and me
Speaker 8: saying it's not making you know, it's not making a difference,
Speaker 8: you know, a nurse coming over and putting a wet
Speaker 8: towel on my head, and another nurse holding my hand
Speaker 8: and them comforting me and saying, you know, you're going
Speaker 8: to be okay.
Speaker 9: The nurse who.
Speaker 10: She was at the top of my body, kind of
Speaker 10: at my shoulders, wiping the tears away and helping me
Speaker 10: kind of hold my breath to keep myself still so
Speaker 10: that the doctors didn't slip with the needle, and just
Speaker 10: telling me that I was going to be okay, that
Speaker 10: I was going to get through it. And up until
Speaker 10: that moment, I'm so excited, like, oh I have twenty
Speaker 10: four follicles, like this is great, Like I'm going to
Speaker 10: have a great egg retrieval.
Speaker 9: And then you're like, oh my god, I wish there
Speaker 9: was only one.
Speaker 10: Like everything was counting on that retrieval and that and
Speaker 10: that's how it feels like the whole the way of
Speaker 10: you know, your world, my partner and I she's counting
Speaker 10: on me to be able to get through this and
Speaker 10: to have.
Speaker 9: This successful retrieval, and all I'm feeling is, oh my god,
Speaker 9: I needed to stop.
Speaker 8: Is this worth it, and you know you your feet
Speaker 8: are in the stirrups and you know you should just
Speaker 8: be laying on the table. But I remember tightening up
Speaker 8: and just trying to relax my body so that they
Speaker 8: could do what they needed to do because I was
Speaker 8: so tense that like my bottom was almost off of
Speaker 8: the table.
Speaker 6: I remember like thrusting my hips up, actually thrusting my
Speaker 6: hips up, saying I feel everything like and like nobody
Speaker 6: believed me, and.
Speaker 5: It's just like I don't know, but what are you
Speaker 5: gonna do? You know, I wanted the procedure done. I
Speaker 5: just let it happen. And I was like, I'm awake.
Speaker 11: So.
Speaker 7: No, you know, I was stone cold, sober and awake.
Speaker 7: And I remember I the egg retrieval. You know, they
Speaker 7: kind of do them one by one or like a
Speaker 7: couple at a time, you know my impression, And so
Speaker 7: you have moments in between pain to say, like what
Speaker 7: the fuck is going on?
Speaker 6: I do remember I think I swore I was using
Speaker 6: curse words because it was just so painful.
Speaker 8: You know, I don't I don't know if I can
Speaker 8: do this any longer.
Speaker 5: You know, you just have to get through it. It's
Speaker 5: going to be over before you know it. Okay, this
Speaker 5: is going to be over eventually.
Speaker 12: You can do this.
Speaker 5: You can do this.
Speaker 9: Blant this moment over, get through it, gets through it.
Speaker 7: I remember yelling or kind of making like ah and
Speaker 7: really like looking in confusion at my nurse, the attending nurse,
Speaker 7: and her saying, you know, I'm giving you the most
Speaker 7: I can legally give you.
Speaker 13: She said that that's the maximum that she's allowed to
Speaker 13: give me, so she couldn't give me anything else.
Speaker 8: I'm almost certain that at one point they said that
Speaker 8: they had given me all of the pain medication that
Speaker 8: they could give me.
Speaker 10: At one point they did say that I had maxed out.
Speaker 10: I couldn't have any more fat dollar versa.
Speaker 9: And I was like, how is this possible?
Speaker 5: Why is that? Even? Like how am I feeling?
Speaker 9: How do people go through this?
Speaker 6: I can feel that, like I could feel the I
Speaker 6: don't even know how to describe that, Like you can
Speaker 6: just feel them inside of their you know, as a woman,
Speaker 6: we've all been through things, you know, with those kind
Speaker 6: of doctors and stuff, But like, this is just a pain.
Speaker 5: It's like hard to even explain what it felt like.
Speaker 2: It's this is hard to do, but could you describe
Speaker 2: the pain that you felt.
Speaker 7: Oh gosh, it felt like someone was like ripping something
Speaker 7: from the inside.
Speaker 5: Of your body. Yeah, which is what they were doing.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's what it felt like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 7: But I remember almost immediately thinking or almost daydreaming in
Speaker 7: that moment that like, the attending nurse had one tube
Speaker 7: going from my ivy into my arm and another tube
Speaker 7: going from my ivy into her pocket. Like it occurred
Speaker 7: to me almost immediately that the nurse was stilling the sentinel.
Speaker 7: And I remember telling my friends, you know, after the procedure,
Speaker 7: my friends who were aware of what I was going
Speaker 7: through but who are also colleagues at Yale in addiction research.
Speaker 7: I remember telling them, like, the nurse is stealing the fentanyl,
Speaker 7: because it seems so obvious to me. I'm infental is
Speaker 7: the most diverted drug in medical settings. It's like a
Speaker 7: now major driver of the opioid crisis, and it was
Speaker 7: just really easy to imagine that someone with access to,
Speaker 7: you know, poorly controlled ventanel would be abusing it.
Speaker 2: That's so fascinating that that's the image that raised itself
Speaker 2: up for you, because it is so evocative, Because it
Speaker 2: is so evocative for example, and also because it was
Speaker 2: true a nurse at the clinic was stealing fentanyl. Not
Speaker 2: Katie's nurse, not the tube in the pocket, but a
Speaker 2: nurse at the clinic was stealing fentanyl and replacing it
Speaker 2: with saline. She did so undetected for months, which meant
Speaker 2: patients weren't getting ventanyl in their ivs. They were getting
Speaker 2: salt water instead.
Speaker 3: Drug addicted former nurse is sentenced for a crime that
Speaker 3: caused unbearable pain to dozens of women. The nurse stole
Speaker 3: drugs and then replaced them with saline solutions.
Speaker 5: Kind of A nurse.
Speaker 3: Admits that she swapped out anesthesia drugs for salt water,
Speaker 3: causing excruciating pain to women during infertility treatments.
Speaker 1: It happened at a top rated ceter of affiliation.
Speaker 4: With a horrible story about the extremes a fertility nurse
Speaker 4: struggling with drug addiction took to get.
Speaker 2: Her in a newly file. A federal investigation determined that
Speaker 2: as many as two hundred patients may have been victims
Speaker 2: of this substitution over five months in twenty twenty. Lawyers
Speaker 2: for some of the patients believe the real number is higher,
Speaker 2: and this went on for longer. I've talked to a
Speaker 2: dozen patients who believe they were victims of this. Eleven
Speaker 2: of them are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Yale, and
Speaker 2: their lawyers were present when we spoke. When I started
Speaker 2: doing these interviews, I was struck by the echoes in
Speaker 2: these women's stories. To me, it sounded like a chorus
Speaker 2: of women saying something is wrong here, again and again.
Speaker 2: The patients wondered how the clinic could have failed to
Speaker 2: detect this, and the conversations I was having made me
Speaker 2: wonder that too. And then I began talking to other people,
Speaker 2: staffers who'd been there, and I learned about what went
Speaker 2: on behind the scenes. The staffers I spoke to were
Speaker 2: horrified by what the patients had experienced. They were grappling
Speaker 2: with their own questions about how this had happened, about
Speaker 2: what had gone amiss. The patients didn't know why they
Speaker 2: were in pain, their doctors didn't know either, and in
Speaker 2: the absence of information about the true cause of the pain,
Speaker 2: people came up with stories to explain it. The patients
Speaker 2: constructed stories about why they felt pain. Staffers at the
Speaker 2: clinic came up with theories too. Eventually, the nurse would
Speaker 2: tell her own story about the pain, which would launch
Speaker 2: a whole new set of stories, the ones her friends
Speaker 2: and family would come up with, the one that would
Speaker 2: get argued in court, the one Yale would tell. And
Speaker 2: all of these stories revealed something about women's pain, how
Speaker 2: it's tolerated, interpreted, accounted for, or minimized. In fertility treatment,
Speaker 2: you evaluate the outcomes by whether you wind up with
Speaker 2: a baby trick by which success is measured It all
Speaker 2: went well if you leave with a live birth. The
Speaker 2: outcomes here are a lot more complicated for everyone from
Speaker 2: Serial Productions and The New York Times. I'm Susan Burton
Speaker 2: and this is the Retrievals. This is episode one, the Patience.
Speaker 2: When the retrieval is over, the women are wheeled out
Speaker 2: to the recovery room, and one of the first things
Speaker 2: that happens is that they try to come up with
Speaker 2: an explanation for their pain.
Speaker 6: They put you into the recovery room and that's where
Speaker 6: you meet with whoever you were with. And I just
Speaker 6: remember that's when I had my phone back and I
Speaker 6: was texting my sister in law because she was my
Speaker 6: confidant for all of this.
Speaker 5: Having been through that and she was.
Speaker 6: Just replying like, oh my god, how could you What
Speaker 6: do you mean you felt everything? And I'm like and
Speaker 6: I was just like, you know, just explaining to her.
Speaker 6: I'm like, I don't know what's wrong, like so and
Speaker 6: I even one of the texts I said, I said,
Speaker 6: I think I'm immune defentanyl, because like I was like,
Speaker 6: I don't think it works on me.
Speaker 2: I'm not sensitive. Defentanyl is a common theory.
Speaker 8: And I remember when their procedure was done, you know,
Speaker 8: my family sort of, you know, we have a family
Speaker 8: text that's ongoing, and I just remember texting them that,
Speaker 8: you know, it's hard to believe that we have a
Speaker 8: fentanyl epidemic where people are addicted, because it did nothing
Speaker 8: for me.
Speaker 2: Not all of the women were alert during their procedures.
Speaker 2: Some were more deeply sedated. They were so out of
Speaker 2: it during the retrieval that they don't really remember it
Speaker 2: or only kind of the pain hits when they come to.
Speaker 14: It was bad instantly, and it shouldn't really be bad instantly,
Speaker 14: like you shouldn't wake up and being like.
Speaker 12: Horrific, like nightmarish pain.
Speaker 14: But I woke up and I was, I mean, like
Speaker 14: it felt like someone had been inside me.
Speaker 12: And like gutted me. Yeah, if it was like a.
Speaker 14: Gutted feeling, it was like someone had been inside me,
Speaker 14: scraped me hollow.
Speaker 12: It was burning.
Speaker 2: In a way. It is more confusing for the wake
Speaker 2: up later patients. They're not matching each stab of pain
Speaker 2: to the needle on the screen. It hurts a lot,
Speaker 2: but it's less explicable and because of that scarier.
Speaker 7: You know, your mind just goes to the worst possible places.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm thinking, is am I bleeding?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 5: And am I bleeding? Internally? Is like a pain is
Speaker 5: normally a pain is a sign? Is protective?
Speaker 11: Right?
Speaker 5: It tells you something's wrong.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of uncertainty in the recovery room and
Speaker 2: elevated blood pressure, a nurse running around to get ginger ale,
Speaker 2: a doctor coming by to say there are fewer eggs
Speaker 2: than we expected. Are you sure you only want us
Speaker 2: to fertilize half of them. It's all just very overwhelming,
Speaker 2: and on top of it, some of the women feel
Speaker 2: like they're being rushed out of the clinic. Julia is
Speaker 2: one of them.
Speaker 4: I remember vomiting. They were giving me some fluids.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 4: Very uncomfortable. There was no way I could walk. They
Speaker 4: put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me out, and
Speaker 4: I just I just had this feeling like this is
Speaker 4: not this is not right.
Speaker 2: Julia is thirty one years old and already a college professor.
Speaker 2: This morning, when her husband drove to the clinic, she'd
Speaker 2: been frantic there was work on a bridge near their
Speaker 2: house and they got stuck. There's only a short window
Speaker 2: to retrieve the eggs before you ovulate them, and Julia
Speaker 2: was worried she would miss it. When she arrived at
Speaker 2: the clinic, she felt a huge relief, like we made
Speaker 2: it both, we made it on time, and we made
Speaker 2: it to this day. Now she's feeling something she never expected.
Speaker 2: At home, she goes upstairs and gets into bed.
Speaker 4: I fell asleep for a little while, and then I
Speaker 4: woke up, and I was nervous. We had a babysitter
Speaker 4: here watching my daughter, and I just you know, you
Speaker 4: wake up, You're like, oh my god, who's with my kid?
Speaker 4: I need to And I walked a few steps to
Speaker 4: try and go down the stairs, and I realized I
Speaker 4: really had gone too far from the bed. But by
Speaker 4: this point the pain was excruciating, I would say, and
Speaker 4: I turned to go back to lay down in my
Speaker 4: bed again, and I pass I mean, I don't remember this,
Speaker 4: but I blacked out or passed out, and I woke
Speaker 4: up on the floor and I kind of busted my
Speaker 4: lip open.
Speaker 2: Julia calls the clinic and they tell her that she
Speaker 2: should go to the er. She's in so much pain
Speaker 2: that she can't bend enough to get into a car.
Speaker 2: An ambulance is called, and when Julia gets to the hospital,
Speaker 2: they check her out. The retrieval is a safe procedure,
Speaker 2: but things can go wrong. Your ovary can strangulate, a
Speaker 2: major artery can get punctured. But none of the obvious
Speaker 2: things are wrong, and nobody can explain what is Back home,
Speaker 2: over the weekend, Julia calls the on call doctor at
Speaker 2: the clinic multiple times.
Speaker 4: By Sunday, I sort of got the sense I was
Speaker 4: annoying him.
Speaker 2: Julia keeps waiting for a call from her official doctor.
Speaker 2: By Tuesday, she still hasn't heard from him.
Speaker 4: It was impossible for me to understand how he hadn't
Speaker 4: called me by this point, But I called his office
Speaker 4: on Tuesday, basically, you know, saying I need to talk
Speaker 4: to you. I wrote, I wrote down what he said
Speaker 4: and I've kept this note since that time. He said
Speaker 4: he was not alarmed, but perplexed and surprised at my experience.
Speaker 4: Those words, I guess ring pretty hollow now, right, knowing
Speaker 4: that there was a pattern of of many women who
Speaker 4: had extreme inexplicable pain after the.
Speaker 2: Egg retrieval, What did you make of that language? Like
Speaker 2: at the in the moment, perplexed and surprised.
Speaker 15: It was, I mean, I guess uh.
Speaker 7: I.
Speaker 4: Felt crazy. I mean I felt I mean, you're by
Speaker 4: this point, I'm asking myself like, am I being difficult?
Speaker 4: Am I? I mean? Am I? I mean you you
Speaker 4: just question your sense of self, like your your ability
Speaker 4: to assess your situation rationally, which is very disconcerting when
Speaker 4: that happens, because at least at the end of the
Speaker 4: day you have that right you start thinking about your
Speaker 4: whole life, right, like I'm a pretty high energy person,
Speaker 4: like I take care of a toddler, I have a PhD,
Speaker 4: I have a job, like I run marathons in my
Speaker 4: free time, like I'm not, you know, like you have
Speaker 4: all these parts of your life that make you feel
Speaker 4: like that give you this sense of like who you are.
Speaker 4: And then I just felt like like they were treating
Speaker 4: me like I was like nuts, you know, for for
Speaker 4: for still, you know, being in pain and just having
Speaker 4: a what I would call a difficult time. You know,
Speaker 4: I just left the office, I mean crying, you know,
Speaker 4: I just felt like like nobody, nobody cares. That's the
Speaker 4: way I would describe how I felt in the days after,
Speaker 4: like nobody gives a crap that this was so.
Speaker 5: Hard for me.
Speaker 2: In the days after the retrieval, other patients live out
Speaker 2: versions of the same story. They also call the clinic.
Speaker 2: They ask is this normal? They say, the tail nyl
Speaker 2: isn't helping. At home, They're laid up on the couch,
Speaker 2: they can't pick up their toddler. They wonder if they
Speaker 2: really should have scheduled themselves for a shift the next day.
Speaker 2: Not all staffers at the clinic are dismissive, but even
Speaker 2: and when they respond with concern, there aren't any real answers.
Speaker 2: Some of these conversations take place days after the procedure,
Speaker 2: like at follow ups to talk about next steps.
Speaker 8: You didn't really talk to the office until day five
Speaker 8: or day six, which is when I found out that
Speaker 8: none of the eggs had survived, none were healthy enough
Speaker 8: to go to testing. And we had to talk about
Speaker 8: moving forward, and that's when I really expressed my sort
Speaker 8: of shock that the procedure was as painful as it was,
Speaker 8: and talked about, you know, if there were other pain
Speaker 8: management protocols that could be considered at that point.
Speaker 11: And.
Speaker 8: I was told and that, you know, that was the
Speaker 8: best pain medication that was available, and my doctor prescribed
Speaker 8: me an anxiety medication to take before the next procedure,
Speaker 8: and I remember saying to my husband, you know, I
Speaker 8: think it's strange because I'm not anxious about a medical procedure.
Speaker 8: You know, it was the pain. It was severe pain,
Speaker 8: not anxiety about going into it.
Speaker 13: The next time that I saw my doctor, he asked
Speaker 13: me how the procedure went, and I said it was
Speaker 13: really really painful, and he was kind of like a
Speaker 13: little bit a little bit concerned, but then he just
Speaker 13: didn't say anything after that. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 13: I guess. And this was my first time doing it,
Speaker 13: so I didn't know any better. So I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 13: I guess it's supposed to be painful.
Speaker 2: Other women are talking about what happened with family and friends.
Speaker 9: So at that point I had talked to.
Speaker 10: A couple of family members who had done retrievals, and
Speaker 10: I felt even worse. There's nothing like feeling shame from
Speaker 10: like another female and unintentional too, you know, like that
Speaker 10: just seems weird, because you know, I was wheeled back
Speaker 10: there and joked with the staff and then fell asleep
Speaker 10: and woke up and was fine. And that seemed to
Speaker 10: be the general consensus between procedures at different clinics that.
Speaker 9: Oh, yeah, I was kind of alert, but I didn't
Speaker 9: feel anything. It was really no big deal.
Speaker 10: Like the shots ahead of time were way worse than
Speaker 10: the actual procedure.
Speaker 9: And I started shutting down after hearing.
Speaker 10: Those stories that this was on me, like I something
Speaker 10: wasn't right with my tolerance and my ability to handle this.
Speaker 2: The women are already settling on their stories about what
Speaker 2: happened to them immune to fentanyl. It's my fault. It's
Speaker 2: supposed to be painful. The clinic tells patients that they
Speaker 2: may experience mild discomfort, but now some of them have
Speaker 2: recalibrated their expectations, including Lynn, who will have eight retrievals
Speaker 2: at the clinic, all of them will cause her excruciating pain.
Speaker 8: You know, again, you hear about IVF and how tough
Speaker 8: of a process it is mentally and physically, and you know,
Speaker 8: I just thought, this is what I have to do,
Speaker 8: This is what I have to do, and sort of
Speaker 8: just thought, this is what women go through.
Speaker 2: Yale declined to offer information about how reports of pain
Speaker 2: were addressed at the clinic or to answer any other questions.
Speaker 2: Episode one of the Retrievals continues after the break of
Speaker 2: the twelve patients I spoke to. Most are white. The
Speaker 2: one black woman in the group was often the only
Speaker 2: black woman in the clinic waiting room. Everyone in the
Speaker 2: group identified as a woman. While couple of them were
Speaker 2: pursuing pregnancy for the first time as they neared forty
Speaker 2: most did not fit that stereotype. Most were married to men,
Speaker 2: one to a woman. That patient would provide the eggs
Speaker 2: and her wife would carry the pregnancy. Her wife presents
Speaker 2: as more stereotypically masculine, doesn't wear women's clothing, and the
Speaker 2: first family members were like, are you sure you want
Speaker 2: to do it this way? Yes, they were sure. One
Speaker 2: was doing this on her own at forty one, after
Speaker 2: the end of a long relationship. Another left her boyfriend
Speaker 2: part way through the process and then fell in love
Speaker 2: with the new guy at the office. One was born
Speaker 2: in Iran and came to the US as a roa refugee.
Speaker 2: Another grew up in Jamaica. One had what she described
Speaker 2: as a horrible childhood she essentially had to raise herself.
Speaker 5: Another longed to have.
Speaker 2: A second baby because she was so close to all
Speaker 2: of her siblings. One had Type one diabetes and was
Speaker 2: used to everyone always attributing all medical issues to, oh,
Speaker 2: it's your diabetes. All of them worked a special ed teacher,
Speaker 2: an accountant at a maritime firm, and a lecturer at
Speaker 2: Yale in the Department of American Studies.
Speaker 5: Her name is Leah.
Speaker 2: Her scholarship encompasses a variety of subjects, exile and migration.
Speaker 2: She's the patient who came to the US as a
Speaker 2: refugee from Iran and gender. From the beginning of her treatment,
Speaker 2: Leah located her experience within a context of assumptions about
Speaker 2: women patients, that they are unreliable narrators of their own symptoms,
Speaker 2: that they are anxious, exaggerating.
Speaker 14: But I remember the first time I wanted to get
Speaker 14: ready for the ultrasound, there was blood on the floor
Speaker 14: from a previous person's ultrasound, and I have to tell
Speaker 14: you it was as ominous as signs fucking come. And
Speaker 14: I just remember me and Navid was with me. I
Speaker 14: think was Navid with me or oh no, he couldn't
Speaker 14: go inside.
Speaker 12: He was waiting in the car. My husband was waiting
Speaker 12: in the car. I was just shaking. I was like,
Speaker 12: this isn't good. I mean it was.
Speaker 14: It was like you you walk in and I was like,
Speaker 14: there's blood. You guys left blood over?
Speaker 12: What is going on here?
Speaker 2: Did you say anything to like, did you say that?
Speaker 12: But here's the thing, and this is where it begins, is.
Speaker 14: You are treated like a hysterical woman from the second
Speaker 14: you walk in there, so you already know and like
Speaker 14: as a you know, like a person who like I
Speaker 14: study this stuff, I teach this stuff, and you're there
Speaker 14: and you're like, oh, this is this is this is
Speaker 14: actually what's happening right now. Here comes like Freud's patient,
Speaker 14: the hysterical woman who's childless and angry and hormonal and
Speaker 14: terrified and bitchy and mean, and that's how we're gonna
Speaker 14: treat her.
Speaker 2: Hysteria comes from the Greek word for uterus. Ancient explanations
Speaker 2: for it involved an empty uterus. A woman was hysterical
Speaker 2: because her uterus was not full, unanchored, the uterus roved
Speaker 2: through the body, which was what made women sick and crazy.
Speaker 2: To fix hysteria, you really needed to fill that uterus up.
Speaker 12: Like so with the blood. I remember being like, there's
Speaker 12: blood on the floor, you know, I was really upset,
Speaker 12: and they're like, okay, okay, I mean, it's you.
Speaker 14: Know I I it turned right back on me, and
Speaker 14: I remember one of the nurses was like, okay, well
Speaker 14: you can calm down, you know. I was told to
Speaker 14: calm down, and I mean, and then when they're doing
Speaker 14: the ultrasounds of someone's doing a transvaginal ultrasound, so there's
Speaker 14: literally like the stick that's inside of you and they're
Speaker 14: moving it around and if you cringe, oh okay, it'll
Speaker 14: just be like another It's just another second. It's just okay,
Speaker 14: just be patient. So you're constantly over emphasizing or over
Speaker 14: dramatizing what's happening.
Speaker 12: It's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 2: Leah felt like her doctor wasn't listening to her. She
Speaker 2: also didn't trust her assigned nurse then kim Lea's first retrieval,
Speaker 2: she felt her pain wasn't taken seriously by anyone, She says.
Speaker 2: They all blew her off. Lea wasn't happy with her treatment,
Speaker 2: but she decided to continue.
Speaker 12: Here I was I saw it, I felt it.
Speaker 14: I was alarmed by it, but I kept going because
Speaker 14: I wanted to have a baby.
Speaker 2: Leah asked for a new doctor. He oversaw her next cycle,
Speaker 2: and soon she went in for another retrieval.
Speaker 14: Right after you're in that room, the ANSCC others came
Speaker 14: up to me and she said, you know what, you.
Speaker 12: Were waking up. You were waking up. We had to
Speaker 12: give you some more meds. You know, you were waking up.
Speaker 14: So again you your body, you were nervous, you were agitated,
Speaker 14: You burdened us, your kind of uncontrollable body put us
Speaker 14: in a position where we actually had to give you
Speaker 14: more drugs.
Speaker 12: You you were waking up, so we had to give
Speaker 12: you more fentyl.
Speaker 14: And I was like, oh, but again to them, to them,
Speaker 14: I'm this woman who's already like on edge. I already
Speaker 14: left the doctor because I didn't like the doctor. So
Speaker 14: the other physicians and the other nurses all know this
Speaker 14: about me. I'm a kind of already unruly, perhaps entitled,
Speaker 14: overly kind of knee woman who is just really angry
Speaker 14: that she doesn't have a baby.
Speaker 2: There's a balance you have to strike as a woman patient.
Speaker 2: You have to complain just the right amount to be
Speaker 2: taken seriously, but not so much that you seem shrill. Still,
Speaker 2: your pain is more likely to be underestimated than men's.
Speaker 2: Black women are more likely to have their pain ignored
Speaker 2: no matter what they do. All of this we know
Speaker 2: from the literature and also from life. In my life,
Speaker 2: I've been the kind of patient where if I've ever
Speaker 2: spoken up, I felt like I need to be obsequious
Speaker 2: later to protect myself. That is what I felt I
Speaker 2: needed to perform. Leah knew she'd need to perform a
Speaker 2: whole range of things in order to get help. Stern, docile, smart, stupid, agreeable,
Speaker 2: and now on ajourney in the recovery room, Leah became
Speaker 2: an observer. She would remember what was happening. She would
Speaker 2: write about this.
Speaker 5: One day.
Speaker 2: She tuned into the language and too the emphasis that
Speaker 2: to her seemed so interesting and fucked up into the
Speaker 2: syntax that seemed to place the blame on her body.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, Leah had also internalized the
Speaker 2: narrative that her body was to blame. Her body was inadequate, deficient,
Speaker 2: that was why she was here. Her body had had miscarriages,
Speaker 2: her body didn't make enough eggs. Her body couldn't cooperate
Speaker 2: long enough to get through a critical procedure.
Speaker 12: Oh God, my body, like here it goes again.
Speaker 14: Not only can I not like have a baby, I
Speaker 14: also can't even just lay still with the right amount
Speaker 14: of fatanel.
Speaker 2: In this moment and throughout her treatment, Leah was simultaneously
Speaker 2: the writer saying, I can name what's happening here, and
Speaker 2: the patient sang, how could I have let this happen?
Speaker 2: Other women occupied their own versions of this position. Their
Speaker 2: professional identities offered them one kind of story about these events.
Speaker 2: Their identities as patients directed them to another. Several of
Speaker 2: them had an area of expertise that was directly applicable
Speaker 2: here in a way that is kind of uncanny. For example,
Speaker 2: there are multiple patients who work in healthcare, including one
Speaker 2: who's designed systems for the safe storage of medications. There's
Speaker 2: a nurse anesthetist. She thought the anesthesia was the one
Speaker 2: part of fertility treatment she wouldn't have to worry about,
Speaker 2: and of course, there's the addiction researcher Katie, who had
Speaker 2: the prophetic fantasy. What's unique about you is that not
Speaker 2: only did you know something was wrong, you knew exactly
Speaker 2: what was wrong I did. Yet still you constructed like
Speaker 2: this other narrative to explain it. Yes, like other patients,
Speaker 2: Katie had expertise that gave her knowledge, but she and
Speaker 2: others pushed that knowledge aside. They decided not to know
Speaker 2: what they knew in order to keep going. I wanted
Speaker 2: Katie to lay out the path to that cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 2: I wanted her to explain exactly how she got from
Speaker 2: one story to the other.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, as I've told you, like I
Speaker 7: came out of that procedure, and I immediately I remember
Speaker 7: immediately texting my friends who are also colleagues and addiction
Speaker 7: research at Yale. Like the nurses stealing the fentanel. It
Speaker 7: seemed it just seemed so obvious. But then, you know,
Speaker 7: then you you sort of come out of the sh
Speaker 7: I remember just coming out of the shock and recovering
Speaker 7: from the procedure, and things just go on.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 7: I no one is addressing the fact that I was
Speaker 7: sober during the procedure, and I remember violently shaking in
Speaker 7: recovery from like the shock. I don't know that that's
Speaker 7: related to having the procedure with or without fentanel, but
Speaker 7: that's how my body responded. And my nurse was there,
Speaker 7: and I remember her saying, I think something like, I
Speaker 7: think it's I think it was so painful because we
Speaker 7: got so many eggs and so it's just sort of
Speaker 7: this like positive, kind of false narrative about what had happened.
Speaker 7: And so then, you know, I think I coped by
Speaker 7: coming up with an alternate explanation, which was that I
Speaker 7: do remember waking up during my having my wisdom teeth
Speaker 7: being pulled when I was a kid, to the nurse
Speaker 7: saying shit, shit, and then you know, giving me more drugs,
Speaker 7: putting me back under. So, you know, the other explanation
Speaker 7: for me was that maybe I'm not sensitive to certain opiates,
Speaker 7: you know, And I remember also that kind of became
Speaker 7: my narrative with you know, my friends and colleagues kind
Speaker 7: of remember me sort of switching to that narrative and
Speaker 7: saying like, well, maybe you're you're not sensitive defentanel. So
Speaker 7: I started to kind of tell, just tell, myself, a
Speaker 7: story about my pain, just try to understand, you know.
Speaker 7: It's a way of just understanding my experience and thinking, yeah,
Speaker 7: maybe this is what happened.
Speaker 2: The story becomes away not only to explain pain, but
Speaker 2: to cope with it, a way to not only make
Speaker 2: sense of the pain, but to manage it, to tamp
Speaker 2: it down, get through it. And this way the story
Speaker 2: becomes the medicine that the patients weren't given. The women
Speaker 2: gear up for second third retrievals. They change their diets,
Speaker 2: they cut chemicals out of their home, They read the
Speaker 2: books the nurses recommend, or they get ready for embryo transfers.
Speaker 2: They make reservations at a hotel in town so that
Speaker 2: they won't have to drive home over a bumpy road.
Speaker 2: Despite these efforts, some of the women miscarry. One woman
Speaker 2: wakes up about ten days after her embryo transfer with
Speaker 2: some spotting. Don't think anything of that yet, a nurse
Speaker 2: reassures her, But the pregnancy test comes back negative. When
Speaker 2: do you think you might want to get started again,
Speaker 2: her doctor asks her at a virtual follow up appointment.
Speaker 2: I am not ready, the patient says. She closes the
Speaker 2: telehealth and that's the last time she talks to the doctor.
Speaker 2: She never goes back to that clinic. She stops fertility
Speaker 2: treatment and doesn't know when or if she will ever
Speaker 2: resume it. She never wants to go through an egg
Speaker 2: retrieval again. Fertility treatment doesn't always result in a baby.
Speaker 2: It's not just giving yourself shots that's hard. It's the
Speaker 2: cycle of hope and loss. It just clambers you, and
Speaker 2: the longer you stay in it, the more the drugs
Speaker 2: mess with your head. It's called the clomid crazies for
Speaker 2: a reason. In one of the women tells me, and
Speaker 2: the money always the money. If your insurance covers this,
Speaker 2: it probably only covers a few cycles. There's so much
Speaker 2: pressure on each one. Once you have to pay out
Speaker 2: of pocket. You're talking maybe fifteen K for one cycle,
Speaker 2: and that's the low end. Some of the women are
Speaker 2: keeping their treatment secret. One of them can't even tell
Speaker 2: her own mother.
Speaker 4: It's hard.
Speaker 2: It's hard to begin with, even without this extra larra
Speaker 2: that's been added on to this. Now, the pain and
Speaker 2: the fear of more of it.
Speaker 6: The first time I went in clueless, thinking you're not
Speaker 6: going to feel a thing. So I think the second
Speaker 6: time I had a lot more anxiety.
Speaker 2: Laura doesn't get as many eggs as she hoped for
Speaker 2: the first time around. It's urgent that she start cancer
Speaker 2: treatment and the doctors accelerate her cycle. Her second retrieval
Speaker 2: is scheduled for barely more than two weeks after her first.
Speaker 2: That morning, his mother drives her to the clinic and
Speaker 2: sits in the waiting room while Laura goes back for
Speaker 2: the procedure.
Speaker 5: And I was shocked. I was shocked again that it
Speaker 5: was the same situation.
Speaker 6: I'm thrusting my hips and telling me like, why do
Speaker 6: we speaking to them? And I was just like, I
Speaker 6: feel everything you're doing. And that was when I did.
Speaker 6: I remember actually saying to them, I could drive myself
Speaker 6: home right now.
Speaker 5: I'm that alert.
Speaker 2: In the recovery room, Laura gets her phone back and
Speaker 2: just like last time, texts her sister in law. Then
Speaker 2: she sees her mom. She tells them both how much
Speaker 2: pain she's in.
Speaker 6: So my sister in law right away was like, oh
Speaker 6: my god, I cannot believe you thought that again.
Speaker 4: But my mom, you know, she just felt she it
Speaker 4: was it's hard.
Speaker 11: Because you know, she had seen me go through so
Speaker 11: much as it was with the cancer, you know, any
Speaker 11: mother who who has to live watching their daughter go
Speaker 11: through that, and then for me to tell her, you know.
Speaker 5: This was supposed to be a special moment because.
Speaker 11: We're preserving my fertility and I'm sorry, and Ford like
Speaker 11: see that it hurts her.
Speaker 5: To see me in pain, you.
Speaker 6: Know, you know, and I was just like, well, thank God,
Speaker 6: I think this was the last time I had to
Speaker 6: do that.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So.
Speaker 2: What did the two of you do, like the rest
Speaker 2: of that day? Did she drive you home?
Speaker 16: Yeah, she drove me home, and she stayed with me
Speaker 16: because she had already been staying with me a lot,
Speaker 16: you know during the day, you know, after my surgeries
Speaker 16: because I couldn't even at that point, I still wasn't
Speaker 16: allowed to lift more than five pounds, so because I
Speaker 16: was still recovering.
Speaker 5: From the other surgeries.
Speaker 4: So yeah, she was with me and.
Speaker 5: You know, maybe lunch and comforted me and just you know,
Speaker 5: we were.
Speaker 6: Like, okay, so now we just go back to waiting
Speaker 6: and you know, hoping we get a good number, and
Speaker 6: you know, I just moved on from it because I
Speaker 6: faced many more surgeries that year as well, so you know,
Speaker 6: I kind of had to just switch back into you know,
Speaker 6: survival mode, like, okay, but now we just battle the
Speaker 6: next thing.
Speaker 2: So in the other surgeries you had, like cancer related surgeries, like,
Speaker 2: what were your experiences of pain?
Speaker 6: Like, it's actually interesting that you bring that up because
Speaker 6: when I did have my double mes ectomy, I was hospitalized.
Speaker 6: I think I was in for a day or two days,
Speaker 6: and strangely enough, the nurse, the night nurse, forgot to
Speaker 6: give me morphine. So I actually was awakened in pain
Speaker 6: the entire night. And I have gluten allergy, so they
Speaker 6: couldn't feed me anything because the kitchen was closed. So
Speaker 6: I spent the entire night like vomiting because they couldn't.
Speaker 6: They were gift trying to give you like percocets or something,
Speaker 6: and so I know what pain feels like.
Speaker 5: I've you know, I've whatever.
Speaker 6: And the next morning the doctor goes, I don't understand
Speaker 6: why she didn't give it to you.
Speaker 5: It was in the order and I had a really
Speaker 5: young nurse. Whatever. This is completely unrelated.
Speaker 6: To that, but you know, I know what pain feels like,
Speaker 6: I've been through it.
Speaker 5: And then when I was hospitalized at Christmas.
Speaker 6: That's funny that like that you bring that up because
Speaker 6: my sister in law actually had pointed out. She goes,
Speaker 6: do you remember when you kept telling me you were
Speaker 6: immune to fentanyl? She goes, when I did a search
Speaker 6: on my phone, I guess you can. She's really savvy.
Speaker 6: You can type in like fentanyl in text messages and
Speaker 6: it'll bring up every conversation.
Speaker 5: She goes, I.
Speaker 6: Actually found one from when you were hospitalized at Christmas
Speaker 6: saying that you were on fentanyl. And I guess she
Speaker 6: had sent me a picture of her Christmas tree and
Speaker 6: I had made a comment like, oh my god, did
Speaker 6: your house burn down? And she was just like and
Speaker 6: she was like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 5: And I said, I don't know.
Speaker 6: The nurse just gave me fentanyl, and so she goes, look, Laura,
Speaker 6: so it does work on you, like oh wow, you know,
Speaker 6: and this was a month prior and I did that
Speaker 6: didn't even dawn on me, like, oh my god.
Speaker 5: So yeah, but when it came time for the other.
Speaker 6: Thing, I was just like, oh, it must not work
Speaker 6: on me, because you know, I just felt like nobody
Speaker 6: had heard what I was saying, so it just didn't exist.
Speaker 6: It was in my head, you know. So yeah, so
Speaker 6: I don't know. I was I foolish because I didn't
Speaker 6: like dispute it more. Maybe not, I don't know, but
Speaker 6: like I just I believe them.
Speaker 4: You trust them.
Speaker 2: Months pass, some of the women get pregnant, others are
Speaker 2: still trying. Some of them are still showing up at
Speaker 2: that clinic for blood draws when they open their mailboxes
Speaker 2: in December twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: Christmas was on a Friday of twenty twenty, and the
Speaker 4: mail arrived on Thursday. It was Christmas Eve, and I
Speaker 4: was busy and I just thought, I'm just not I'm
Speaker 4: not going to go get the mail today. And I
Speaker 4: waited until Monday the twenty eighth, and you know, it
Speaker 4: was a nice day. I went outside, I got the mail,
Speaker 4: and you know, I got this letter.
Speaker 9: So I got this letter in the mail. It's nothing fancy.
Speaker 9: It's Yale envelope. I'm assuming it's a bill. Bill's never
Speaker 9: stopped coming with IVF.
Speaker 12: You get so much when you work at Yale.
Speaker 14: Also, you just get like Yale emblazoned mail, and so
Speaker 14: you're like, oh, okay whatever.
Speaker 12: It was like this thin thing.
Speaker 14: And I was like, oh they you know, change locations
Speaker 14: or something.
Speaker 12: It's like this is not important.
Speaker 9: And instead of just setting it aside.
Speaker 10: I happened to open it and I was.
Speaker 7: Furious, and it says, Dear Kathleen Garrison, I'm writing you.
Speaker 7: I'm writing to you in my role as director of
Speaker 7: Yale Reproductive Ender, Chronology and Infertility, to let you know
Speaker 7: that we have learned of an event that may have
Speaker 7: involved your care.
Speaker 4: You know that they've become aware that the nurse was
Speaker 4: switching out the sentinel with the saline.
Speaker 7: A few weeks ago, we learned that on multiple occasions,
Speaker 7: a Yale Fertility Center nurse replaced fentanel a routinely used
Speaker 7: narcotic medication with a normal salt solution saline in some
Speaker 7: medication files. As a result, some patients may have received
Speaker 7: saline instead of the intended narcotic medication during their procedures.
Speaker 7: While there's no reason to believe that this event has
Speaker 7: had any negative effect on your health or the outcome
Speaker 7: of the care that you received, we believe that you
Speaker 7: should be informed.
Speaker 10: They make this stupid comment in the letter that there
Speaker 10: was no harm done from this happening, and I I
Speaker 10: don't know if Hall was home or I called her,
Speaker 10: and I was like, bullshit, no harm done.
Speaker 8: Don't send me a letter and tell me that we're confident.
Speaker 8: No one's you know, outcomes were affected by this. I
Speaker 8: know my outcomes were affected by this, so I know
Speaker 8: what I experienced and went through.
Speaker 10: But Yale wasn't going to help me. They didn't think
Speaker 10: there was harm. They didn't think it was a problem.
Speaker 10: You know that it was the most honestly, I think
Speaker 10: it was one of the most disrespectful ways. They probably
Speaker 10: could have notified any of us that it had happened,
Speaker 10: that you know, oh, we had this little breach and
Speaker 10: you're fine, No, biggie, go about your day.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Again, no one reached out to talk with us or
Speaker 8: to see what we experienced as patience. My only communication
Speaker 8: about it was through the letter, and that's still to
Speaker 8: this day.
Speaker 2: And yet, in addition to fury, there's also vindication. When
Speaker 2: they learned the news. However they learn it, the women
Speaker 2: text their twin sister, or run inside to their husband,
Speaker 2: or weep in their kitchen.
Speaker 5: It was mind blowing.
Speaker 6: I immediately called my mother. I immediately called my sister
Speaker 6: in and I'm like, ugh, like no something. It just
Speaker 6: hit like it all makes sense now.
Speaker 8: And it was like, okay, it all makes sense. It
Speaker 8: was almost a relief, a relief to know, like, you know,
Speaker 8: I'm not crazy, there's nothing wrong with my body.
Speaker 5: I don't have something like.
Speaker 8: Locking opioids or you know where you know my body
Speaker 8: is wrong and doesn't react to medicine.
Speaker 6: But it also shows how much they ignored my pleas
Speaker 6: for help and like saying like like nobody believed me.
Speaker 5: And so in a sense it.
Speaker 6: Was like relief, you know, just knowing that what I
Speaker 6: felt was real.
Speaker 2: But there's more, the letter continues.
Speaker 7: The law enforcement investigation and our own review have found
Speaker 7: no reason to believe that you were exposed to an
Speaker 7: infection due to this event. Even so, we can appreciate
Speaker 7: that you may want further reas insurance, and if you wish,
Speaker 7: we will arrange for you to be tested for a
Speaker 7: group of blood born infections at no charge.
Speaker 5: And I was like, what the fuck?
Speaker 4: You know, those words not alarmed, but perplexed and surprised
Speaker 4: came back to me, right, And you just feel like
Speaker 4: so completely let down by this institution that's supposed to
Speaker 4: make you feel safe and I mean, I mean keep
Speaker 4: you safe, right, an institution that's supposed to keep you safe. Right,
Speaker 4: that was gone.
Speaker 2: But maybe the most remarkable thing about the letter is
Speaker 2: the way it addresses pain. It seems to be saying
Speaker 2: you did not feel what you felt.
Speaker 7: I also want to assure you that the fertility center
Speaker 7: routinely uses a combination of pain medications during procedures. We
Speaker 7: closely monitor patients for signs of discomfort every procedure and
Speaker 7: adjust medications or add medications as needed. In this way,
Speaker 7: we can be confident that our patients stay comfortable even
Speaker 7: if one medication is not working well. I don't believe
Speaker 7: that accurately describes my experience. And then it goes on
Speaker 7: to say, if you have any questions or want a
Speaker 7: blood tests, you know.
Speaker 5: Here's what you can call.
Speaker 2: The women put the letter on the counter and shock.
Speaker 2: For months, they've been constructing their own stories about what
Speaker 2: happened to them. Now they have Yale's story, which is
Speaker 2: that this is barely a story at all. The questions
Speaker 2: the patients have been asking all along have a new focus.
Speaker 8: You know, as soon as I received that letter, it's like,
Speaker 8: how does this happen? You know?
Speaker 5: And how does it happen at Yale?
Speaker 8: You know, a hospital system with such a great reputation,
Speaker 8: and how did it happen for so long. So many
Speaker 8: things had to go wrong, you know, for this to
Speaker 8: happen as long as it did.
Speaker 10: How does an entire facility let this happen?
Speaker 9: Who trained them? Who thought that this was okay?
Speaker 10: I get sent home with you know, I get packages
Speaker 10: in the mail with sharp needle containers and strict instructions
Speaker 10: and alcohol swabs and this crazy protocol that I'm expected
Speaker 10: to do at home.
Speaker 9: They make you double check things, you know, are there
Speaker 9: puncture marks? And I'm like, did I.
Speaker 10: Really spend more time following directions at home for hormone shots?
Speaker 9: Like where were they?
Speaker 7: I think my immediate reaction was, you know what, how
Speaker 7: could this happen?
Speaker 11: At yeale?
Speaker 7: Like why wasn't there a better system in place to
Speaker 7: prevent it or detect it when it was happening? And respond,
Speaker 7: you know, why why wasn't our pain?
Speaker 12: Listened to.
Speaker 2: The women wonder about the system that failed them, But
Speaker 2: there's something very intimate and human that they are wondering
Speaker 2: about too.
Speaker 5: We were notified that it was a nurse.
Speaker 8: We didn't have the name of the nurse in that
Speaker 8: original letter, and so it's sort of you know, racing
Speaker 8: through your mind, like, well, which nurse because you build
Speaker 8: such a strong relationship with these people, and you see
Speaker 8: them so often and you trust them and you know,
Speaker 8: build a relationship, and so you're thinking like, well, which
Speaker 8: nurse could.
Speaker 5: This have been?
Speaker 8: And then you're you're showing up, you know, and Okay,
Speaker 8: who's not here anymore?
Speaker 12: Who's gone?
Speaker 5: And just trying to figure out.
Speaker 9: Who it was.
Speaker 2: The patients know what happened. They're about to find out
Speaker 2: who did it. That's next.
Speaker 1: That was episode one of The Retrievals. You can listen
Speaker 1: to the whole series on Spot or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and we'll be back with a new episode
Speaker 1: of Heavyweight next week.
Speaker 2: The Retrievals is produced by me and Laura Starceski. Laura
Speaker 2: edited the series with editing and producing help from Julie Snyder,
Speaker 2: Additional editing by Micky Meek, Katie Mingle and Ira Glass.
Speaker 2: Research in fact checking by Ben Fhalen and Caitlin Love.
Speaker 2: Music supervision, sound design and mixing by Phoebe Wang, with
Speaker 2: production help from Michelle Navarro. Original music by Kala Palone
Speaker 2: and music mixing by Toma Poulin. Indechubu is a supervising
Speaker 2: producer for serial productions at the New York Times Our
Speaker 2: Standards editor Susan Westling. Legal review by Dana Greene, Art
Speaker 2: direction from Pablo del Coon, producing help from Jeffrey Miranda
Speaker 2: Kelly doe Bernon Borelli, Desiree Eboquois and Anisha Money.
Speaker 4: Sam Dolmick is the Assistant Managing Editor.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to doctor Marcel Cedars, Calvin Hawker, Lisa Schumann,
Speaker 2: Kylie Silver, and doctor Maggie Smith. The Retrievals is a
Speaker 2: production of Serial Productions and The New York Times