Issue 60: Rage Against The Medical Machine
Saturday August 03 2019
Our American fertility specialist, Dr Blocker (an acronym of Bastard, Loveless, Oppressive, C-word, Kick-you-when-you’re-down-er), is holding my embryo to ransom. He’s doing it with a flourish of “you chose to do this in America so you’ll finish it here”, wrapped up in an extra £70,000 bow with divorcing surrogate cherries on top.
Actually, this is far from a joking matter. It’s not just about money — it’s the clash between US and UK laws on surrogacy, which means that he may be right in saying that we have to complete in the US. We’re in perpetual panic mode, but worse than that, it’s so hard to make coherent decisions when you’re super-stressed and weary. I can only describe the feeling as akin to having a teenage tantrum, that ball of emotional fury that used to make you slam the door off its hinges and play Rage Against the Machine at full volume to let your parents know how furious you were. Remember that? No good decisions ever came from behind that poor wonky door.
We know that Dr Blocker (aka Dr Fernando) point-blank refuses to help us with what seems to us the ideal mitigation plan: fly altruistic, pragmatic and proactive Rebecca to his clinic to transfer the embryo, fly home and revert to the British experience under the gentle care of my favourite doctor I ever met, Dr Hiyer. We know that we’ve already paid Fernando a hefty sum to do this last transfer, so if we don’t do it there we’ve effectively lost another eye-watering amount of money. But we can’t do it there because we no longer have a medically and psychologically approved US surrogate. Lydia is justifiably unsuitable and now — I hate hate HATE to say it — she’s becoming a bit narky. She wants to know why (the hell) we are worried about her suitability.
In the season finale of The American Surrogacy Experience, will Sophie and Mr B be able to let Lydia down gently? And will our protagonist be able to extricate herself from the US and find a solution to complete the Mother Project? Not while Rage Against the Machine is my mental soundtrack, no. I can’t think while I’m this angry. I need sleep to block out all this noise. We’re both a bit over exhausted, so it comes quite easily, until I ping awake at 3am and peer at my phone screen, searching my email archive for Care Fertility.
Care Fertility is a world-leading IVF group that works with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to help repatriate embryos into their British labs. In an early season of this enthralling box set Dr Hiyer put me in touch with it to talk about bringing our Russian embryos back to the UK for reasons including a severe lack of regulation and consistent care. Those problems are why the admin at the Russian end got screwed up and, long story short, our embryos were blacklisted from seeking refugee status in Britain.
I find the email chain from four years ago and reignite the conversation, this time telling Bob, the kind man who tried to help us, our status quo. “Hi, me again! PLEASE HELP US BRING OUR LAST EMBRYO HOME”, it reads. Succinct, to the point — very 3am.
Bob was lovely and kind and told us this would be impossible. It’s those blinking international laws again. In the UK you can only pay a donor up to £750 and, he says, “if your fertility doctor can provide proof that this is the case then that’s stage one done”. Well, it turns out he’s a loveless, obstructive bastard, so that’s highly unlikely. It wouldn’t be true, either. “How much did your US agency ask you to pay your US donor? More than £750 I assume?” Stick another zero on there please, Bob.
The other huge issue is anonymity. Our donor would need to be contacted and agree to waive her request to remain anonymous, so this baby could find out who its donor was when it turned 16. Likely? That would involve getting considered and sensitive help from our US agency. So that’ll be another no and another door slammed shut.
We thought that was our answer. It is nothing short of soul-stabbing that this life-changing decision is dependent on an inflexible set of rules. I can’t get past the injustice, obsessing about it even though it doesn’t get me anywhere. The record is stuck on my teenage tantrum days, so I’m hearing Zack de la Rocha sing “f*** you I won’t do what you tell me” over and over and over and over and over and . . .
Fine. Dr Blocker, I resolutely will not do what you tell me. Instead I call the man I trust. Dr Hiyer tells me in no uncertain terms to get out of this unfortunate situation and go to a reputable clinic where his colleague resides.
His solution is genius. No one is stopping us sending that embryo to another part of America. If his colleague is willing to help, we could plan the great escape. Send our little last chance in a golden chariot to Washington, where this new wonder-clinic is, and go there with Rebecca for transfer day. When she is pregnant (wish pray, wish pray), she’ll be back home where I can be alongside her growing belly, rather an ocean away. Now we just need to find out if this colleague is on board so we can tell Dr Blocker where he can shove his mental ransom.
A day later (a single day! One unit of days!) we get a call from Dr Strauss of Washington. He is glorious and wonderful and he tells us that he would love to help. He wouldn’t normally accept embryos from another state, but this time he will because he’s horrified by our treatment thus far.
This feels good and bad all at once. I don’t know what to do with my scrambled brain, but I know we are finally edging towards the right combination of variables. There is a giant sigh of something like relief, then my phone pings. It’s Lydia again and this time she’s angry.
“It was brought to my attention that Dr Y is now aware of me wanting to get divorced which is now part of the reason I can no longer proceed in this process. Explain this to me.”
I’m busy at work in a relatively new job, but I stop and stare. I don’t know what to do with this new information. Is Lydia having her own Rage Against the Machine moment? At us?