This is an excerpt of Justine Griffin’s upcoming feature on her experience with in vitro fertilization. The full piece will be published in early summer by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, where she works as a reporter. We are publishing this excerpt with their permission as a preview to the feature. We previously posted a full Q&A with Justine about her experiences writing this piece, which you can read here.

 

The Cost of Life: Excerpt for The Riveter
by Justine Griffin

I have always been the wimp in my family, the first to cry or complain at any sign of pain or discomfort.

My parents and younger brother have taken great pleasure in reenacting all my greatest “near-death” experiences and illnesses at the dinner table over the years. Like the time I fell off the back of a golf cart and was convinced I’d broken my collar bone.  (I didn’t.) Or the time I thought I had meningitis. (It was just a cold.)

So the idea of donating eggs–injecting myself with hormones and undergoing an invasive surgery, all for someone else to have a baby–seemed a little far-fetched to my family.

A couple who lived half a world away plucked me out of an online library of hundreds of women who were willing to donate their sex cells to strangers. Each of us had been broken down by our general attributes. My specifications, a fertility agency would later tell me, were desirable: 25 years old, green eyes, 5-feet, 10-inches tall, blond hair, a 3.6 university grade point average and a burgeoning new career.

Those same specifications are what make my parents beam with pride.

One night last summer at my parent’s dinner table, I told my mom and dad that I wanted to help somebody have a baby. The usual lively suppertime conversation and laughter died down, and my parents lost their appetites. They didn’t want to joke about that time I drove my brother’s four-wheeler into a tree anymore.

I told them I am like the thousands of other women–the daughters, sisters, girlfriends or wives at someone else’s dinner table–who donate their eggs to couples who cannot conceive a child on their own.

With an estimated 7.3 million people experiencing infertility in the United States, or one out of eight couples, the demand for young women like me who voluntarily undergo hormone drug treatment and egg retrieval surgery is high. And with the average compensation for this kind of donation at about $5,000 in Florida, the allure of this relatively new medical procedure is attracting more and more young women, despite the many unknowns.

The eggs in my ovaries made me valuable. Without them, there is no in vitro fertilization, no surrogate mothers, no baby making business. As it unfolded, I began to feel like a commodity rather than a human being, a means to an end on the infant assembly line.

As I came to learn, the $3 billion fertility industry is the Wild West of American medicine. The industry is mostly unregulated in United States, especially in Florida. Egg donation is outlawed in Louisiana and in countries like Germany, Austria and Italy. A medical society sets unenforceable guidelines for doctors to follow in the U.S.

The $3 billion fertility industry is the Wild West of American medicine.

Businesses have sprouted up, too–agencies across the country that facilitate relationships among donors, surrogate mothers, couples and doctors, cashing in on a piece of the fertility pie.

Few medical studies have been done on the long-term effects of egg retrievals on healthy, 20-something donors, despite some women suffering from stroke, early menopause and cancer diagnosis. Doctors and researchers say there’s not enough information to confirm if the hormones used in in vitro fertilization treatments lead to infertility or other health issues.

One of the most commonly prescribed IVF drugs, Lupron, is used off-label, or not for its intended purpose. The drug was developed to treat men with prostate issues and has been used for chemical castration.

Universities with medical school programs often host reproductive endocrinology departments that make enough money from IVF treatments to fund entire schools within the university. Generally, fertility doctors are among the highest-paid employees at private universities.

College campuses around the country are ground zero for doctors and agencies looking to recruit donors. Agencies target young women on Facebook, Craigslist and in college newspaper advertisements, offering them cash and the idea that they’re helping start a family, but they don’t explain the risks.

This began as a way for me to honor a childhood friend who passed away and a hopeful account of my experience with the fertility industry. But it devolved into a tangle of broken promises, scary science and questionable experiences–ending with a ruptured cyst on my ovary and a fear that my future reproductive health may be in jeopardy.

The doctors were there for my eggs and not for me. But I would never tell my parents that.
I wouldn’t tell my mom and dad that I woke up to tumbleweeds of my own blond hair on my pillows, and that it would fall out in clumps for months. Or about the number of times I vomited from nausea and migraines, induced by the high levels of hormones I was pumping through my body.  I wouldn’t tell them that no one knew if the effects of these hormones would haunt me later in life.

As it unfolded, I began to feel like a commodity rather than a human being, a means to an end on the infant assembly line.

It is a common, modern arrangement. Though this couple would never know me, I would help give them a child once the hormones had sufficiently ballooned my eggs for the surgical plucking and placement in another woman’s uterus. They would get what they paid for, the gift of a life, a baby that is at least half like me. But the couple would decline to get to know me, the woman whose attributes caught their attention via the distant comfort of a computer screen.

Along the way, I would rely on my family to support me through a procedure they never really agreed with in the first place.

“My first grandchild is going to live halfway around the world from me,” my mother said.

I may be paranoid about a runny nose, but this was different. It wouldn’t be something we’d ever joke about at the dinner table.

***

People from all over the world could view current photos and information about me online while shopping for a donor. The application took more than an hour to complete and gave parents a checklist of just about every important detail in my life.

The application called for my school history, including my SAT exam scores and my grade point average from college. They needed to know my exact weight and height. The thickness of my hair. My personality. My favorite subjects in school. My future goals. My family’s medical history.

These people needed to know the condition of my eyes and teeth and how much I drink each week. They required my driver’s license and my Social Security number to prove I wasn’t a criminal.

I joined a baby-seeking social network, where parents can flip through the pages of more than 300 donors from across the country. They read personal details about our bodies, our lives, our families, and scrutinize the pictures we provided. These parents are crafting their perfect Barbie doll baby – picking out what physical features, strengths, likes and dislikes they want in their own little human.

It was a strange feeling, to be picked apart like that via messages on a computer screen. I would never know these people, their names, their faces, or where they came from, but they would know so much about me.

Just a few months after signing up, I was matched.

***

After 10 minutes of squirming in the booth at Carmel Cafe in Sarasota, I gave in and unbuttoned my pants.

My boyfriend, David and I stopped for a mid-morning brunch on a Sunday morning following an early doctor’s appointment in Tampa. I spent the majority of the drive reclined in the passenger seat with my pants unzipped.

With only a few more days to go before my egg retrieval surgery, I should have known better than to try to squeeze into a pair of tight, high-waisted denim shorts. My abdomen was so distended from 10 days of hormones injections that I no longer fit into any of my jeans.

I was so uncomfortable that I didn’t even care if our waitress saw me, zipper down and all. I just wanted a mimosa even though I knew when I signed up to be a donor alcohol was out of the question. (I never ordered the drink.)

David and I sat quietly for a long time, pretending to mull over the menu when really we were both thinking about the near future. At our earlier appointment, the doctor said my estrogen levels were too low.

My dozen or so eggs, which responded so well to the hormones at the beginning of this cycle, were beginning to taper off.

“You have several eggs that are big enough to retrieve,” said a doctor I met for the first time earlier that morning. “We need to see if a few more will grow to be that size too.”

The disappointment was obvious as he looked at the images of my ovaries on the ultrasound screen.

“Is this bad?” I asked during the exam. “Should I be worried?”

“It’s not good, no,” he said. “But let’s wait to see what your blood work tells us.”

He made me feel like something was seriously wrong–something that went beyond my egg donation and could be a problem later on in my life.

Even David was concerned. This was the first time he’d been in the room during an exam.

My instructions were to double the dosage of my medications to see if we could actually make it to the retrieval date. There was no guarantee that more medicine was going to help. If my body did not start responding and soon, my cycle could be canceled.

I was worried. Did I just put myself through all of this for no reason at all?

***

Justine Griffin is a journalist for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. “The Cost of Life” will be published in the Sarasota Daily-Herald toward the end of May. And The Riveter is very excited to read it.