know me, the woman w
2015年7月4日Cost of Life
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.)
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. A woman injects hormones into her body for at least two weeks at a time. This stimulates her ovaries, producing dozens of eggs that are twice as big as normal. Doctors monitor the growth day to day by transvaginal ultrasounds and estrogen levels in blood samples. The donor is put under anesthesia during the retrieval surgery, where doctors pierce the ovaries again and again to remove the eggs.
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 the United States, especially in Florida. Egg donation is outlawed in Louisiana and in countries like Germany, Austria and Italy.
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 replica oakleys 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 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. fertility clinics reported that 18,306 procedures used frozen or fresh donor eggs in 2010, a 65 percent jump over the last decade, according to a 2013 study published by buy replica oakleys The Journal of American Medical Association.
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 cheap oakleys outlet 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.
Most donors do it for cash. Compensation can be anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 for your average donor. But a woman with model good looks or an Ivy League degree stands to make $50,000 or more for her eggs. I made $5,000.
Some do it not so much for the money, but rather to help others, friends, family members, even strangers. I donated in memory of Ariel.
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.)
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. A woman injects hormones into her body for at least two weeks at a time. This stimulates her ovaries, producing dozens of eggs that are twice as big as normal. Doctors monitor the growth day to day by transvaginal ultrasounds and estrogen levels in blood samples. The donor is put under anesthesia during the retrieval surgery, where doctors pierce the ovaries again and again to remove the eggs.
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 the United States, especially in Florida. Egg donation is outlawed in Louisiana and in countries like Germany, Austria and Italy.
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 replica oakleys 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 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. fertility clinics reported that 18,306 procedures used frozen or fresh donor eggs in 2010, a 65 percent jump over the last decade, according to a 2013 study published by buy replica oakleys The Journal of American Medical Association.
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 cheap oakleys outlet 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.
Most donors do it for cash. Compensation can be anywhere from $4,000 to $10,000 for your average donor. But a woman with model good looks or an Ivy League degree stands to make $50,000 or more for her eggs. I made $5,000.
Some do it not so much for the money, but rather to help others, friends, family members, even strangers. I donated in memory of Ariel.
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