When I read last week about more than 100 women who discovered that their frozen eggs and embryos may not be viable due to a failure in the freezing process, my heart went out to them.
I would like to say that I can’t imagine how they must feel, but yes, very good. Because I know firsthand exactly what it feels like to have done everything you can to preserve your fertility and then have all hope taken away from you. It’s absolutely devastating.
In my case it was not due to a technical error, but I still vividly remember the phone call in July 2017 telling me that of the last seven eggs they had thawed, only five had thawed normally, and of those five only two had fertilized, both of them abnormal shape. There was no chance they would ever form an embryo, much less the baby she desperately wanted.
Years later, I can still remember how completely floored I felt. If I dwell on it too long, tears still sting my eyes.
‘Nothing?’ I remember asking. ‘I don’t have anything?’
In an instant, I felt like my dreams of motherhood had been stolen from me. I’m not someone prone to daydreaming and fantasies, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about the potential those frozen eggs had.
Even though I knew they had no guarantees, I couldn’t help but think about what it would feel like to be pregnant; have my baby in my arms; watching that baby grow into a walking, talking toddler.
Alice Mann felt as if her dreams of motherhood had been stolen from her when she discovered there was no chance of any of her eggs forming an embryo.
It was only natural that having done everything I could to ensure I could be a mother (three years earlier, at the age of 36, I had three cycles of egg freezing, in total 14 eggs at a cost of around £14,000) , I would wonder what my future offspring would be like, whether I would have a son or a daughter, and imagine the person they might become when they grew to adulthood.
Then, in an instant, there was nothing.
So I know exactly how the 136 patients must feel who, back in September and October 2022, had their eggs and embryos frozen in the assisted conception unit at Guy’s & St Thomas’ Hospital in London.
In recent weeks they will have received a letter informing them that a “manufacturing issue” with some bottles of a solution that may have been used to freeze their hard-earned eggs and embryos could mean they “may not survive the thawing process.” “. and may not be able to be used in treatment.
A dispassionate list of hypothetical ‘mays’ that will undoubtedly have provoked a maelstrom of emotions.
After my own devastating call, I tried to explain how completely heartbroken I felt. But everyday language seemed inadequate to describe the complexities of the grief, loss, and frustration I was experiencing.
On eggedonblog.com, the website where I documented my treatment, I wrote that I felt “sad, angry, and resentful,” and lamented the fact that I had “nothing to say other than crying and raging at the world that was.” really unfair.”
Because, as I said back then, “Three years ago, I froze my eggs, knowing that I might never have a child from those eggs, but knowing that it was a positive step I could take at a time when everything seemed really bleak.” .
‘I do not regret. I really don’t, but I didn’t do it just because I wanted to be able to look back without regrets. I did it because I wanted the chance to get pregnant with eggs younger than me. And I no longer have that possibility.’
Because that’s what frozen eggs and embryos are: possibilities.
Some of the patients at Guy’s Hospital were women, like me, who had not met the right person to have a child with, but were worried about the impact their age might have on their fertility.
A tube of eggs can be kept in cryogenic storage in preparation for in vitro fertilization (IVF).
It is not impossible that they can still conceive with their own eggs. (I tried, and failed, and finally used donated eggs to become a mother.) However, others were cancer patients who may have since received treatment that has left them infertile.
But I not only feel compassion for these women, I feel furious indignation for them. Because the hospital knew almost a year ago that this was a problem.
In March last year, just seven months after the women froze their eggs, they were alerted to the problem. So why has it taken them so long to share the information?
This unnecessary delay has only worsened the tragedy. In life, a year may not seem like much. But when it comes to fertility, when every month counts, it can make the difference between success and failure.
When I was going through my own egg freezing treatment and subsequently attempting IVF with my own eggs at the age of 40, time seemed to be of the essence.
With each passing month, I worried that my fertility was declining. I gave up vacation to be able to receive treatment, and when a cycle had to be canceled because I had an ovarian cyst, I worried that this would be the right one: my last fertile cycle.
So for the clinic to have been aware of these issues and apparently withheld this information from patients for 11 months is absolutely inexcusable. The arrogance, the complete disregard for the impact on patients’ lives is… well, I was going to say incredible, but it’s not.
Because over the last ten years I have been treated at four fertility clinics, and while many of the staff I encountered were kind and compassionate, there is a culture in these places that seems worryingly prevalent.
Whether it’s waiting hours for a scheduled appointment, having to chase test results or having to deal with thoughtless comments that seem casually cruel, like the one from the receptionist who told me if I didn’t pay the £120 for a blood test there and then, the results would be destroyed.
A liquid nitrogen bank containing egg and sperm samples. Guy & St Thomas’ Hospital in London has told 136 patients that their eggs and embryos “may not survive the thawing process”.
Then there was the anesthetist who hadn’t read my notes and saw that I was trying to conceive alone with donor sperm, who asked where my other half was; and the nurse who gleefully quizzed a desperate friend about her Mother’s Day plans. Everything smacks of a lack of consideration for the patient.
And this catastrophic delay in notifying patients is the last straw.
I know that if you are one of the women affected, nothing I say will change what happened or the sense of loss and injustice you feel.
But as someone once told me after another failed IVF cycle, there are many ways to be a family and you will find the right one for you.
When I received that devastating call, I could never have anticipated that, less than a year later, while trying (and failing) to get pregnant using an anonymous sperm donor, I would meet the man who would become my husband. and the father of my son.
Nor could I have imagined that having a child of my own would involve the altruism of an egg donor, or that I had the capacity to love a child to whom I am not genetically related in the way I fiercely, proudly, and viscerally adore. my son. They are, without a doubt, the right family for me.
Names have been changed.