Eggs and Fertility: You Have Wildly Disparate Options

I’ve had an amazing and, I must say, disturbing experience in attempting to freeze my eggs to ensure a pregnancy. Today, as many of you are aware, women can have their eggs “harvested” and frozen to help ensure a pregnancy down the line (couples having trouble conceiving can also undergo IVF – in vitro fertilization).

In New York City, it would seem there are only a few institutions that provide this service: the big, hectic, and wildly expensive name brand establishments that also insist the patient is pumped with massive doses of medication and submit to general anesthesia for the harvesting procedure. (Please note: I do not discourage other women from seeking treatment at these institutions. I also do not disregard the success that other women have had while seeking oocyte cryopreservation treatment. I want women to note that if this approach does not work for you, you have other options. Please read about my experience below).

I initially underwent this procedure at one of the name-brand institutions, and what an ordeal it was. For one thing, I had to inject myself daily for an entire week in a rather complicated process which yielded a very disappointing result.

Like many other women, I was determined to try again. Through an old friend in Los Angeles, I found my way to a lesser known alternative establishment in NYC that employed a Japanese approach to egg retrieval and is staffed by Asian professionals. Here the environment was much calmer and more supportive, and the cost was dramatically lower. They also prescribed far less medication, half of which was taken orally, and applied a local anesthesia for the retrieval process. The results surpassed my hopes and expectations.

How does one make sense of such infuriating disparities in the delivery of a serious medical procedure?! Why hasn’t the non-brand-name service been granted the recognition it would seem to so richly deserve?

Talk to me, ladies. Have you gone through this experience? Or do you know someone who has? What have your impressions been?

Dear readers, I will continue to write about oocyte cryopreservation treatment and women’s health as these are topics I feel passionate about. Please share your experiences with me!