Women denied pain relief tell their stories in podcast The Retrievals — review
In January 2020, Laura Czar arrived at the Yale Fertility Center in Connecticut to undergo an egg retrieval procedure. Two months earlier she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had had a double mastectomy. Fearing her treatment might leave her unable to conceive, Czar decided to freeze her eggs. And so, after completing a course of hormones to stimulate egg production, the day came to have them removed.
The procedure involves passing a needle through the vaginal wall and into the ovary. Czar would be conscious but sedated with a combination of fentanyl (for the pain) and midazolam (to cause drowsiness). “I was, like, ‘This is going to be easy’,” she recalls. “I had been through so many surgeries and procedures. I know what it is like to be under anaesthesia and be given medication so you don’t feel things.” But when the procedure began, Czar was still alert and gripped by intense pain. “I remember saying ‘I feel everything’ and nobody believed me.”
The new podcast The Retrievals hears from a dozen women who had the same procedure at the Yale Fertility Center and who all reported extreme pain throughout. At the time they were told by staff they had been given the maximum amount of pain relief, meaning they couldn’t have more. However, it later transpired that a nurse at the clinic had been stealing fentanyl and replacing it with saline solution. It is thought that 200 patients had been denied pain relief during egg retrievals over a period of five months.
This five-part series comes from Serial Productions and is written and hosted by This American Life’s Susan Burton. To be clear, this is not a whodunnit. The nurse responsible is revealed in the second episode as Donna Monticone, who later pleaded guilty to stealing fentanyl. The series is more interested in how such a thing could happen. The answer is complex, often upsetting and reveals much about the offhand way women are often treated in medical settings, and how they respond. While some of the patients at Yale emerged from the procedure feeling angry, others wondered if they were at fault. “Am I being difficult?” one asks. “You just question your sense of self.”
As is customary with Serial podcasts, the production is elegant and unobtrusive and the storytelling unhurried and thoughtful. Burton maintains a quietly solemn tone even though what she reveals is deeply troubling. Because while The Retrievals tells an unusual tale of medical malpractice, its power lies in its familiarity. I doubt there will be a woman listening who does not recognise elements of this story: of medical professionals underplaying their pain, or rushing them as they explain symptoms, or being made to feel weak, hysterical or unreliable witnesses to their own experience.
This podcast is not a comfortable listen, but, in foregrounding the voices of female patients, it is, in this instance, worth the pain.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Fiona Sturges
