Serial’s “The Retrievals” Podcast Tells Stories of 12 Women Who Underwent Sober Egg Retrievals

In November 2020, Susan Burton, a staff member of the weekly podcast “This American Life,” came across an article published by a local news outlet that detailed an incident at the Yale Fertility Clinic in which a nurse was caught stealing fentanyl intended for outpatient surgical procedures for her own personal use. This caused the women at the clinic to undergo egg retrieval procedures partially or completely sober.

This was the start of what is now known as The Retrievals–a five-part podcast series produced by Burton for Serial Productions, which, as of 2020, is a unit of The New York Times. The first episode was released on June 29, with a new episode scheduled for every Thursday following for four weeks.

At the Yale Fertility Center in November 2020, Donna Monticone was caught replacing fentanyl with saline and putting the vials back to be administered to patients, causing women to undergo egg retrieval procedures with little to no painkillers for a total of five months. Shortly after being confronted with the accusations, Monticone admitted that she had been doing this for about five months.

Seven of those women, after being informed of Monticone’s actions through a letter in the mail, sued Yale University in November 2021, accusing the facility of failing to safeguard its supply of fentanyl. As of now, there are 68 plaintiffs involved in the lawsuit, and as many as 200 women could have undergone this reality over the five months in 2020 that Monticone admitted to tampering with the medication, The New York Times reported.

In the series, Burton tells the stories of 12 of those women, in which they detail the physical pain they went through during the egg retrievals and the emotional pain they were caused when, according to them, no one at the center seemed to care.

An audit by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration showed that in total, there were discrepancies in 665 units of controlled substances, including fentanyl, ketamine and midazolam. Monticone eventually pleaded guilty in federal court and admitted to tampering with the products in March 2021. She was sentenced to four weekends in prison, three months of home confinement and three years of supervised release.

In episode one of the podcast, Laura Czar tells the story of her egg retrieval at the clinic. Two months prior to the procedure, she said she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. She scheduled the egg retrieval in the hopes that she could use them later if her cancer treatment affected her fertility.

When the procedure began, she recalled saying to the doctors and nurses, “I feel everything.” A nurse responded, she said, and told her she had been given the maximum dose of painkillers. Her story mirrors what others told in the podcast–some were fully alert during the procedure, and others woke up in what they described as “excruciating pain” after. When they told their physicians of their pain, they all got the same response: they were given the maximum dose of painkillers, and could be given no more.

Karen Peart, a spokesperson for Yale, told the Yale Daily News that Yale “deeply regrets the distress suffered by some of the patients.”

“After Yale discovered the nurse’s misconduct, it removed her from the Center, alerted law enforcement agencies and notified patients who might have been affected,” Peart said. “The Center also reviewed its procedures and made changes to further oversight of pain control and controlled substances.”

When the news outlet asked what those changes entailed, Peart declined to comment. Researchers shall store schedules I-V controlled substances in a securely locked, substantially constructed cabinet.

In October 2022, Yale University agreed to pay $308,250 to settle the lawsuit and resolve the allegations that it violated civil provisions of the Controlled Substances Act. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the act requires clinics and researchers to store schedule I-V controlled substances in a “securely locked, substantially constructed cabinet.”

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine frequently issues guidance for fertility clinics such as Yale’s on best practices for patient safety and positive outcomes. When asked to comment about any guidelines about how best to safeguard drugs and painkillers in a clinic that the organization might issue as a result of the public nature of the incident, Dr. Michael Thomas, president of ASRM, told Inside Reproductive Health he is not familiar with the incident and declined to comment further.

The themes reported in this publication are those of the news. They do not reflect the views of Inside Reproductive Health.

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