That's Life
NOPE Interviews: The IVF Clinic
This piece is competing for a cut of the $400 prize pool in NOPE Interviews: The Bounty open submission call.
This is based on real events and conversations experienced by the author during the course of IVF which ultimately proved to be fruitless and costly in all manner of ways.
Interviewer: The Author [NW]
Subject: wished to remain anonymous [S]- also undergoing IVF
Cameos: Lab Technician 1 [LT1] and Lab Technician 2 [LT2]
Location: CARE Fertility Clinic, Nottinghamshire
The Interview: The IVF Man
Location: the reception-cum-waiting room of the clinic.
[S enters the reception area where NW is already waiting]
NW: Morning.
S: [nods but appears very distracted and keeps looking back at the door.]
NW: You alright?
S: What? Sorry?
NW: You look a bit…
S: [Shakes head]
NW: It’s nerve wracking isn’t it. All this.
[Gestures at all the tasteful slightly soft focus images of embryos on the wall.]
S: It’s just there was this eagle or something…
NW: What?
S: Massive bird, in the car park. I was sat in the car and this massive bird just fucking smacked into the window [fist hits palm]. Shit myself.
NW: Bloody hell! An eagle? You sure?
S: Well, maybe not an eagle; bird of prey though, had that fan tail. It was massive. Red Kite maybe. Smacked right into the window. [fist slaps into palm] Then it was flapping like it was trying to get in!
NW: You don’t need that do you.
S: Too right.
NW: You in for egg collection today?
S: Yeah. You?
NW: No. My wife’s having an examination. Just had round 4 fail last month.
S: Four? We’re on six now. Wife’s in surgery now. I’m waiting for the call, you know, the old windowless room.
NW: It’s tough isn’t it.
S: [nods] Last time this one. Can’t hack it. Can’t afford more.
[a few minutes pass]
NW: Hope you don’t mind me asking…I’m writing an article for a magazine, about IVF from the man’s perspective. Could I ask you a few questions, man to man?
S: Oh yeah? Which magazine?
NW: Well, any that I can get interested really. I’m just asking blokes like me, in the waiting room, if they can share any experiences.
S: Yeah, fire away.
N: So, you said this is your 6th attempt. How do you feel now compared to how you felt at the start.
S: [laughs] Broke and sick of it.
[we both laugh]
S: Seriously though, at the start we were dead excited, and the first couple of goes were free on the NHS, but by the third go, it’s all getting a bit serious. That’s when we decided to come here because of the success rates 36-38%. But after you’ve forked out the thick end of ten grand a couple of times…”
[LT1 enters the reception area. She is a tiny woman wearing a blue robe and a black niqab. Only her eyes are visible. This takes both of us by surprise. ]
LT1: Sorry to interrupt, can you follow me please Mr. S.
“Good luck.” I find myself saying, and then immediately feel a bit weird. S gives me a strange look. I feel like a complete dick.
[Note: at this point, S will be going to what the clinic calls the “Production Room”. Colloquially it goes by other names such as: “The Windowless Room”; “Glans Hatch”; “The Wank Room”; “The Jizznasium”.]
[A few minutes later, LT1 walks back into the reception area and through some double doors on the other side. About 5 minutes later she comes back. I double take: She’s holding a steel box in her hands which is padlocked and attached to one wrist by a length of sturdy chain. She sees my puzzled look and as she passes me she says
“Sperm thieves.”
[A few moments later, she walks back into the reception, closely followed by S who sits back down. We avoid eye contact. I say nothing. LT1 walks off with the metal box swinging from the chain.’]
NW: What was that all about? That metal box?
S: Apparently they’ve had sperm thieves. Women coming in and snatching the samples.
NW: [shakes head in disbelief] Isn’t there a hatch?
S: It’s out of order. When you’re done, you press the button then someone comes to pick it up instead.
NW: That must be when they strike then, eh, the Sperm Thieves.
S: Must be. She put it in that box anyway. Padlocked it up. It felt weird handing over a pot of, you know. Still warm. And her being muslim and that, in that robe thing.
NW: Mmm
S: Still, better a woman than a man.
NW: Is it?
[He thinks about this for a moment and I know he’s thinking about whether it’s gay]
S: Shouldn’t make a difference, but it does. I’d have prefered the hatch.
NW: I hate the hatch. I always imagine they’re listening…
S: Or timing you or something. Having a bet on how long you’re going to be.
NW: Puts you right off your stroke.
[We think about this for a while.]
S: Do you think I should tell her?
NW: eh?
S: Tell the Mrs. About the eagle?
[I shrug]
S: I mean is it good luck or a bad omen? She’s superstitious.
NW: Maybe not then.
S: But then if I don’t tell her, and it doesn’t work…
NW: You can’t get sucked into that hole, mate.
S: I know. I know.
NW: That’s a good question though.
S: What?
NW: For the article…superstitions, rituals. Daft things people do.
S: Oh yeah. We have to wear lucky undies.
NW : No Way! My wife does that.
S: The first time we got an implant that held for a few weeks - the undies we had on? “Lucky Undies.”
NW: My wife is exactly the same. She put them on this morning.
S: But maybe they were the unlucky undies all along. Or maybe hers are lucky and mine are unlucky and it cancels out.
NW: Best not to have these things isn’t it, but then you can’t help yourself, once you start. It’s like when they say they have a new process that’s increases success rates by 2.8%
S: You can’t not say yes can you.
NW: Nope. Then they tell you it’s three grand.
S: Like that video thing? You done that.?
NW: Where they film them and pick the best ones?
S: uh huh.
NW: Amazing though , when you see it splitting.
S: I just think they’re having your eyes out and you have to go along with it. I mean, they’re just blobs right, so how do they know what’s the best blob?
[we talk about being hostage to IVF and blindly stuck in the system]
NW. You got any other quirky rituals?
S: She won’t eat cake for the whole cycle.
NW: What!
S: Not since the first go. It was just after it was implanted, and it was her birthday and she reached up for the cake tin and said she felt something pull inside. Then she had some spotting. Two weeks later, the scan showed there was nothing.
NW: Can’t have been that, though, can it.
S: Yeah but you can’t tell her that. She was beside herself. Even after the consultant said there was no way it could have been that.
[Note: at this point, the lab will be washing S’s sperms, cutting off the heads and preparing them to be injected into the eggs collected from his wife. Egg collection is an unpleasant, painful and often crushing experience, but if there is a good harvest of eggs, some can be frozen]
S: So what’s your wife in for then?
NW: they’re checking her cysts on a new progesterone regime. Might get us more eggs for the next cycle.
S: Right.
NW: I hope they fix the hatch. That woman with the sperm safe would put me off.
S: I hate the hatch. You’re stood there, hunched over that bench or whatever, fapping away. There’s no way they can’t hear you, just the other side.
NW: I hate thinking some other blokes just been in there, wanking off. I never touch the porn.
S: It’s never great anyway. Probably ten years old.
NW: I don’t even look in the cupboard. Wouldn’t want to touch it.
S: [begins to laugh] There was this one time, right, no word of a lie, I went in and there was a copy of Horse & Hound open on the couch.
NW: Horse and fucking Hound?
S: Centrefold, saddles and whips.
NW: Fuck off!
S: Must be a joke, right. The lab techs having a laugh.
NW : Could have been worse…
[ we spend some time thinking of unlikely types of masturbation magazines- Anglers World; Tractor World - rule 34 gets a mention.]
S: Shame there’s no way the Mrs. can be there to help out, really. Little bit of romance wouldn’t go amiss.
NW: what’s the worst experience you’ve had then?
S: Aside from the eagle?
N: Yes
S: I dropped the pot once.
NW: Fuck
S: Yeah, lost the lot.
NW : Nightmare. You can’t just crack another one out either.
S: Nah, and even if I could, the second shot is no good apparently. They did try and get some off the inside of the lid, but, nah.
NW Did they freeze the eggs at least?
S: Yes, but the Mrs was fuming.
NW: “You had one job!” right?
S: Yep. Spare room, silent treatment the works. Still, I wasn’t getting any anyway.
NW: Tell me about it. It does get like that doesn’t it.
[LT2 appears in the reception. ]
LT2: MR Winney, your wife is out of theatre now, so you can come through.
[turns to S]
NW: Alright mate, well that’s me- nice to talk to you and good luck with it.
S: Likewise. Fingers crossed!
NW: Legs open!
With thanks to Mac Sitko and the NOPE brigade for this excellent idea.
The video at the beginning of this piece shows the astounding moment when LIFE begins and the sperm and egg do their thing and cell division starts. These two brave bundles of cells did not survive past 9 weeks, I am afraid to say - long enought for us to see their little hearts stop beating. All the events and conversations actually happened, although not quite in the way I have put them together here.
Lol, this actually looks like something real on the interwebs
Well written piece about something that is (to me) utterly horrible. The monetisation of sorrow, societal attitudes that demand a DNA mini-me from people, the ruination of marriages & intimacy, the fuckery with drugs & hormones, that blend of cavalier & saviourish attitudes, etc. etc Oof. Sorry you had that piece of life experience. Hope writing this helped put it into a place where it burns less sorely.