There was only one thing that stayed constant & unwavering throughout my life | the deep desire to be a mom. I never dreamed of a fairytale wedding or had a clear vision of my future career, but I always knew I wanted to have kids of my own one day.
As a young teenager, I babysat often for families throughout my neighborhood. I earned enough money that my dad had me track my earnings on an Excel spreadsheet and I paid taxes on those earnings. He encouraged me to start my own babysitting business.
My first job after college was at a residential facility for kids aged 6-12. These children were wards of the state of IL.Their parents had their rights terminated by the state & these vulnerable children bounced through the foster care system until the system also abandoned them. They were some of the lucky ones to land in a residential facility where staff cared & tended to them.
I love kids. All kids. Always have. Always will.
Motherhood was robbed from me in the most inhumane way.
Months before my 35th birthday, I decided I would do everything I could to preserve the possibility of becoming a mother. I had been single, more or less, for the previous 4 years and had no potential prospects on the horizon. I decided I would not abandon the one dream I had always clung to | motherhood.
After researching my options, I found a well-reviewed fertility clinic that was conveniently two blocks from my condo in Chicago. The first visit to the fertility clinic consisted of a urine sample, an ultrasound & bloodwork. The results of these preliminary tests provided my first hurdle. The hormonal gods were also against me. This too would be an uphill battle.
I scheduled a follow-up call with my fertility doctor to see if this made sense to pursue. I thought we had a very honest and informational conversation. He told me he was talking to me as if he was my daughter. He was so comforting to me & I believed him.
If I knew where my IVF journey would take me; I never would have pursued IVF.
Now, I feel like a pawn in a game of corruption and greed. I was preyed on during one of the most vulnerable experiences in life. Fertility. IVF.
My trust in humanity, in kindness, broke. My heart shattered a million times over.
I developed PTSD. I uncovered a gutting repressed memory. Flashbacks from random memories would flutter in & out, triggered by seemingly nothingness.
I decided to fight the odds and move forward with IVF. It was my last chance to pursue motherhood.
The fertility clinic recommended three fertility pharmacies and encouraged me to research, review and select one of the three. I did as they said and after speaking with all 3 recommendations, I selected Fast IVF.
I spent nearly $4,000 on the medications that I received. My concerns started well before my shipment was received, but I had no idea how much more terrifying the nightmare would become.
The nightmare is my reality.
I received my Gonal-F, Microdose Lupron and Menopur along with syringes, alcohol pads and gauze on the same Friday I was at a hospital getting my first MRI for my debilitating chronic pain.
I took Saturday to decompress & simultaneously mentally prepare for the beginning of two weeks of injections.
Sunday morning kicked off with my first two morning injections. At times, I felt like a scientist, concocting diluents and powders with a syringe.
Fertility Medications & Syringes
IVF is not for the faint of heart. But science is magnificent and provides so many beautiful opportunities. IVF was fascinating and terrifying and painful.
My fertility doctor projected 10-14 days of injections before I would use the trigger syringe which stimulates meiosis, 36 hours in advance of egg retrieval.
In the first week of injections, needles got lodged in my stomach because I did not receive the proper syringes in my order from Fast IVF. An outdated glass vile would regularly break and glass shards would be lodged in my fingers. With blood oozing from my fingers, I would concoct the injection that I was required to inject into my stomach.
All for an opportunity I never imagined not having.
An opportunity that was robbed from me for all of the wrong reasons.
My trust in humanity has since wavered.
My stomach became swollen & bruised. I started running out of my $4,000 supply of fertility medications that should have been dosed out per the 2-week script from my clinic. I had to rush out to an incredible fertility pharmacy in Chicago for an emergency replenishment of medications early in my IVF journey.
There started being too many red flags.
Despite this, my body started responding to the fertility medications. I would go to the fertility clinic several times a week for bloodwork & ultrasounds to track progress. After a week of self-injections 4x a day per day, my doctor thought we should cancel the egg retrieval.
My follicles were growing. I was taken aback.
They said, “this is just your first IVF cycle.” How many IVF cycles can a woman physically, emotionally and financially afford!?!?!
I advocated for myself. I was freezing my eggs, during a pandemic, battling chronic pain, to preserve a lifelong wish and fundamental right as a woman.
If the egg retrieval was successful, my plan was to find a donor & implant an embryo within the year. I planned to have a baby alone. Also, only the first year of cryopreservation is included in the $10K IVF price tag with my heavily discounted, Covid-19 Special (no joke), pricing at the fertility clinic.
My fertility doctor listened to me. We did not cancel the egg retrieval and instead allowed an additional day of injections. My egg retrieval was scheduled for 6am on September 27th.
By 7 am, I was elated to learn I had received my best possible outcome | 3 eggs.
Those 3 eggs I had fought so hard for.
Those 3 eggs that my doctor did not want to fight for, giving me the likelihood of 0-3 eggs while simultaneously wanting to cancel my egg retrieval & take all odds away from me.
After the haze of post-retrieval, I knew I needed to research Fast IVF which was the recommended fertility pharmacy I picked. So many things had gone so terribly wrong. The warning signs had been there the whole time, but I thought a referral from a fertility clinic meant their pharmacies were vetted.
Once I started digging around a little, my cause for concern heightened significantly.
I finally contacted Fast IVF’s generic email and attempted to communicate my concerns with them directly. After 7 weeks of unsuccessfully trying to settle with Fast IVF directly; I reached out to my head high school soccer coach & an accomplished lawyer.
What was learned about my defendants in discovery broke my spirit & has fundamentally changed certain parts of me.
Corruption. Greed. The insatiable need for more. That is what I lost motherhood to.
I self-injected two weeks of gray market fertility medications. My defendants prey on women in the midst of an incredibly delicate & vulnerable time, to profit themselves.
Only the weak prey on the vulnerable.
For two months, I was forced to constantly relive in agonizing detail the second hardest journey of my life | IVF.
My 141 pages of litigation were filed January 27th.
My defendants evaded my lawsuit and the litigation filed months prior by the pharmaceutical company that developed the Gonal-F pen. The bogus parent company for Fast IVF, based in Houston, TX, was disbanded. My one US defendant, originally from Turkey, fled the country. We learned this months after filing after all of my appeals were returned to my lawyers.
These crooks evaded repercussions and are preying on the vulnerable, for their own gains, all over again.
I lost motherhood to corruption and greed. I had my eggs discarded. I broke. And then rebuilt stronger. But I am forever changed from my second hardest journey.
My IVF journey broke my trust & stole a fundamental right from me in the most inhumane way.
