This was an excellent meditation on how women’s pain is perceived and often dismissed within the medical industry. It was at times infuriating, heartbreaking, and informative. This production was thoroughly researched, excellently produced, and it treated these women’s stories with the care they deserved from the very beginning. I expected no less from the New York Times and will be reflecting on this case for years to come.

This was not a victimless crime. Stop with the “compassionate” lens for addicts. You are enabling. And this nurse continued to only care about herself. I saw it as “mother” privilege- not race privilege. Listen, half of America is divorced. Let CPS deal with the ex and send her away for the full sentence. So disgusted as a nurse myself.

If you are a woman who has experienced pain and been dismissed by the medical establishment, this is sadly far too familiar.

Unnecessarily long just to fill out multiple episodes. Didn’t finish after fast forwarding through chunks of the 2nd and 3rd episode. Should’ve been one good episode. Also, why are we trying to sympathize the nurse?? So Donna’s going through a bad divorce and she uses Fentanyl to cope? I’m supposed to feel bad for her?? She watched countless women go through horrific medical procedures with no pain management. Ridiculous. Skip it. Google it and read a news article about the story.

This podcast was incredibly well written and produced! Thank you for bringing such an important subject to our attention! I’m heartbroken for the patients and the pain they experienced as well as the way they were treated so unjustly after what happened to them was discovered.

This podcast shook me to my core. Having 2 daughters now via IVF, I cannot imagine. Minimizing their pain, then the trauma! I am shaking angry, disgusted listening to the way Yale, the DEA & the Department of Justice handled this entire case. And then when Donna gets her license reinstated, I wanted to scream. This is absolutely sickening. I pray to God he protect every woman impacted by this vile, pathetic excuse for a human being, Donna Monticone. I am certain the laws of karma and the universe will make sure she pays for her crimes against humanity, specifically, women, more specifically women yearning to be mothers.

I almost couldn’t breathe throughout the episodes as they went from one outrage to the next, but I especially appreciate the articulate outrage of the victims. Not a fan of long sentences, but this punishment is SO outrageous. Part of the wider disbelief and devaluation of women, even when they are pursuing the socially-sanctioned path of motherhood.

Great content, but the music is like someone released a colony of ants inside my brain.

Why listen? Serial team does it yet again, with caveats. It's a five-part story of a group of women undergoing IVF at the Yale Fertility Clinic who endured agonizing egg retrievals without pain blocking medication because a fentanyl-addicted nurse had been stealing and replacing it with saline. These traumatic experiences and their aftermath become entangled in a thicket of thorny issues: Is women's pain still systematically downplayed and ignored by the medical profession? How much responsibility does Yale bear for these errors, and have the sufferers been appropriately compensated? Was justice served in the case of the nurse, who was given an extraordinarily lenient sentence owing to her responsibilities as a single mom and an emphasis on rehabilitation rather than punishment for drug-addicted offenders? The podcast does an admirable job of examining these threads, though I was unconvinced and remain somewhat skeptical of its most assertive conclusion—that this incident is further proof of widespread bias against women in medicine.

Incredible reporting. Thank you for doing this.

I left bedside ICU/ER nursing to work in quality over 10 years ago…and I have professional experience with co-workers who diverted narcotics…but I don’t believe they actually swapped solution (God, I hope not, working in Trauma centers)…but at first just listening to the egg retrieval stories I thought, “isn’t egg retrieval uncomfortable to some extent?”…but Holy F&$£🥺 These poor women! I am so ashamed on behalf of my profession…absolutely abhorrent and criminal. Addiction is a disease, but this is just cruel😕

Wow. This one really did its job and did it WELL. I was blown away by the story arch, the order in which the stories were told, and of course the validation and recognition of female pain. As sociology student, so many pieces of puzzle were addressed that hadn’t occurred to me, and that I especially appreciate. Thank you, everyone who helped bring this reality to light.

Wish they didn’t use the language they do around sex and bodies, it feels dismissive of transgender people.

Need to remove the constant sounds of swallowing and saliva you can hear so loudly when each person is speaking. it is so distracting I have to turn it off it’s worse than nails on a chalkboard.

Very personal tales intersect & intertwine and told from multiple perspectives and from all sides, of motherhood, fertility, betrayal, drug addiction, medical procedures (IVF) forgiveness, and true crime and institutional failure on the part of Yale. The personal touch of getting to know each role in this story was fascinating.

Such a great podcast that tells a deeply personal and also anger inducing period. To name a few aspects. As a man, who can only try to understand, the show really helped me with that. Also, shame on Yale.

Wow—shockingly little reporting re: Yale and their negligence and culpability. Individuals are torched but no urgency for changes in systems or protocol to keep people safe in the future; just get real mad at this one person and move on. Absolutely wild “reporting.”

This podcast is an amazing real life story that addresses so many important topics: how women are treated in the health system, the infertility treatment system, substance abuse, the responsibility of healthcare workers towards their patients, how healthcare professionals address and manage patients complaints of pain, the criminal justice system, and motherhood. It captivated me, as a nurse and a mother myself. The podcast is constructed and hosted so well, it was a joy to listen to.

Very interesting but I could not listen to all the episodes because of the annoying overly dramatic “background” music. So unnecessary and detracting from the dignity of the women who suffered.

I’ve actually been avoiding listening to this series because it would force me to think about my experiences with IVF, revisit the painful events that led me there, and reflect on the lasting toll this journey has had on my mental and physical wellbeing. I could see myself in many of the women interviewed; I’ve had many of the same thoughts and had also convinced myself to believe some of the same stories. While this is billed as a true crime podcast it just hit different for me. I really appreciate the time and care that was taken to bring these women’s stories to light.

As someone who has gone through the IVF process many times, this podcast was relevant and jaw-droppingly intense regarding the legal system in regards to women’s health.

Podcast about a crime turned political. Horrible journalism.

My only criticism is the sound editing could be modified so the soundtrack doesn’t rise to such melodramatic and annoying levels.

My jaw was on the floor for much of this series. How is this healthcare in America in 2020? Believe women and what they say about their bodies. This is an important series for women and healthcare workers. Just Wow!

This podcast is useful in highlighting the awareness of the systemic biases, discriminatory attitudes, stereotypical generalizations, cultural insensitivities and prejudicial practices that exist and have been cultivated by many practitioners in healthcare. Awareness is important and necessary for overcoming this silent pandemic and fully achieving successful outcomes in healthcare.

This really could have been one or two episodes. I found some of the victims to be annoying, as they carried out their little social justice warrior digs/etc. The story is crazy, but the podcast just dragged on and on, with no real payoff.

What happened to these women is horrible and how the nurse was punished is unforgivable. I think it felt an episode or two long, but still an important story to tell for the women affected.

You can see where its going after the break of episode 1. Typical NYT garbage

I’m late to the party as I just listened to The Retrievals. It was so well done I was left balling my eyes out & rocking. While I wasn’t at the Yale Clinic, the same thing happened to me in 90s at the fertility clinic at Bethesda Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. I had an egg retrieval there for ICSI which is a step above IVF. Let me preference what I’m about to say by saying I’ve had 9 surgeries so I know how hospitals work. I also have a high pain tolerance & I always rebounded quickly. Yet knowing all that I still allowed these people to gaslight me over & over again bc I believed they were all that stood between me & having a baby. I believed I could trust them. I believed that a doctor & a nurse were sworn to “do no harm.” I believed they had my best interests in mind. Turns out your story is my story verbatim except in my case I don’t know why I wasn’t given ANY medication. When we arrived and they were preparing me for the retrieval the nurse said we were about to go & I asked her for the pain meds. She looked at me like I was insane or like it was an inappropriate comment, and said, “you don’t need them.” I said, “yes I do.” She said it wouldn’t hurt & that most women didn’t need medication. I told her I needed them again and she slapped a CD player on me and said I’d be fine. All I could hear on the CD player was static and she refused to help me find me find a station. She ignored me throughout the procedure. She refused to make eye contact with me. While the retrieval was happening I begged the doctor to stop or give me medication and he ignored me too & said all the same things these women say they were told. I was criticized for many things before, during & after the retrieval but moving on the operating table as he jabbed me over & over made them the most angry. I’m 60 now & I still have nightmares & flashbacks from this procedure, from having my body internally ripped apart by a stainless steal tube & bc no one listened to me as I screamed out in pain. I screamed for them to stop and the doctor would say things like, ‘don’t you want a baby?’. The nurse who refused to give me ANY pain medication, ended up calling me a wimp. My husband & I went back to specifically talk to the doctor about my pain, nightmares & the nurse’s behavior. I was treated exactly the same as these victims. The doctor continued the gaslighting. I never thought of the nurses stealing the medication. I never knew we suffered physically & long-term emotionally so the nurses could feed their addiction or make a profit. In the end we paid $15,000 so I could be tortured & gaslighted. We’d already been through many years of infertility treatments. I couldn’t make myself try again after this horrifying incident. Like I said, this happened to me in the fertility clinc at Bethesda Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sadly, to my knowledge, they were never held accountable. After hearing your story I’m certain I wasn’t the only one who suffered there. And after your story I know it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me. That’s gives me some peace of mind. It wasn’t me. Thank you! You’re a brilliant story teller.

The women in my family ,(Portuguese culture),have transferred the notion that I a female will have pain in my life. I have trained myself even to be silent in my pain, just like my grandmother and mother always did. I was even silent during my vaginal birth only grunting when pushing my 8lbs baby.

I loved this! This was very well told!

Mismanagement of meds in fertility is unfortunately not uncommon. I myself was not given one of the drugs to stop ovulation before the retrieval 2x. After switching clinics and several medical hurdles, I now have a child… but the trauma is real. The condescending medical staff is real. The pain and suffering, all too real. As women we often assume we must suffer for what we want, but these women featured show all the variations of the same pain.

The only way to know if the other one has a good connection to you and the rest is through a text or a phone message

This was such a hard listen. We live in such a crazy society that everyone is suspicious of you when you ask for pain medication when you are in dire need of it, and it is honestly because of cases like this that we have to deal with that nonsense. Women, specifically, are treated so differently than men when it comes to the health care world. I am so happy to see that this case was ultimately “solved” in the sense that it will not happen to anyone at the Yale fertility clinic, but makes you wonder how many other places this is happening in.

I worked in an Ivf a unit , did procedures that lasted 30 minutes and patients were always comfortable “ so what does very upsetting mean” 1. What we had to hear was Donna’s life , what was missing 2. If the doctors did many procedures with satisfied patients and suddenly many patients were in pain , calling the office and doctors and nurses didn’t look into this , the doctors should be ashamed 3 .no one really focused on how many women suffered , but we really heard about donna’s life 4.one person who works with addiction also focused on donna’s life and once again never mentioned how many women were in pain 4. The judge never really mentioned , once again , how many women were affected, Donna’s life 5, there are many people with upsetting family situations , this helped Donna win a case and I’m a nurse 6 and what do we always hear “ we are here for the patient” 7, well for some reason “ we forgot about the patient” 8. I also had ivf at an institution where they cared for the patient and the doctors would never have let the patients suffer 9. They would have investigated 10. What happened at this institution 11. This is what “ very upsetting means” in this country

Beautiful job bringing in many lenses through which to see different experiences. Having done IVF four times I am grateful I had not thought about what was happening while I was out (ignorance is bliss), yet realize I was lucky as I had no idea to ask about the anesthesia practices, would not have known what to expect to sound the alarm. But as the women said, even if you DO instinctively know “something is wrong”, you’ve paid almost $20k, weeks of appointments + shots to get to this moment, possibly with the sense your fertility is declining each month you wait — to weigh all those risks while lying awake on a table in agonzing pain trying to make any sort of coherent monumental decision, is horrifying. I send such compassion for the women who walked through this hard, hard thing. What happened to you was not okay.

I myself had to go through rapid IVF prior to beginning chemotherapy for breast cancer and I cannot even fathom having to deal with something like this on top of everything else. Really eye-opening and I hope serves as a warning to medical professionals and institutions that we are paying attention.

host and music is so annoying.

Interesting story, but this could have been done in one episode. It’s mostly just the narrator rambling on and on in a whiny annoying voice.

I had to listen to it twice, which never happen to me. I myself just went through a IVF treatment, some of the words I hear made me brush into tears. What a story, and the podcast’s storytelling is so powerful and full of professionalism. My respect. Thank you for making such a good podcast.

Thank you for this podcast. Very informative. I am so sorry all these women suffered. It was not right. Absolutely wrong. Women are often not taken seriously. This is the main reason, I hate going to the doctor and god forbid I have to have a procedure. I may just die because I don’t fully trust medical professionals. At 36/37, I was told by my obgyn about being too old to have kids, cause at the time my exhus and I was talking about it. In the back of my mind, I was willing to even go this route if needed. I’m glad we never got around to having another child. I can’t imagine. What happened to these women is horrific. Yale to me is responsible. That nurse should have got jail time. Something. It wasn’t enough what she got. She intentionally caused harm to these women.

Well told story but I wish a race component was added in. If Donna was a Black woman her sentencing would be harsher and how forgiving the patients were would not be the same.

First and foremost, my heart goes out to the victims - for their pain, for the aftermath, for being gaslit, etc. This podcast does a great job talking about the overall issue in healthcare of believing women and especially women’s pain levels. While we have come a long way, there is still so much more to do. I, like so many others, have a traumatic experience of a situation being minimized, not believed, told you shouldn’t be feeling what you’re feeling, made to feel like it’s your fault, not adequately cared for/listened to during medical events for a multitude of reasons, and then have that medical trauma continue to be minimized afterward. It’s not just Yale, but I’m glad she is reporting on this and at least holding them and their staff publicly accountable and everyone can learn from these situations, hold themselves to higher standards, to treat the whole person not just work towards an outcome no matter the cost.

Thank you for telling these stories.

I related to these women, not because I have ever had IVF, but because I am a woman whose pain has been ignored. My doctor disregarded my severe, cyclical pain, which I believed was a kidney stone, because I didn’t have blood in my urine. He (of course it was a he) heard me say that it was as bad as childbirth and suggested Advil. To be clear, both of my experiences with childbirth were induced, so generally, from what I understand, more painful than uninduced labor. Thankfully, I had effective epidurals both times, but it was awful until they kicked in. I still don’t know if I had a kidney stone because I figured even if I sought other help I would be dismissed again. My nurse friend later told me that my doctor likely thought that if it was bad enough I would have gone to the ER.

This podcast, though depressing and shocking, was absolutely amazing to listen to. With these women’s stories, I have found myself absolutely stunned and sad and on an emotional roller coaster the entire time. Definitely recommend.

Incredible podcast that presents an awful situation that was completely preventable with better health care systems. Thank you for shining a bright light on the issues hidden in the shadows when it comes to an entire healthcare system built for, built by, and researched on men. Women’s health deserves better and these women deserve better.

Absolutely loved it! This got me back into listening to podcasts. Some reviewers are upset because you knew the basics of the story right away, I love that. I’m not a fan of mystery. I can really feel the emotional content because there’s no secrets. I’m hoping for an update when the Yale lawsuit is settled.

You had me in the first episode but by the second episode we’re already being gaslight into thinking what Donna did is ok???? F that noise. Those women deserve real justice.

Each episode is a different reflection on women’s pain—physical and emotional—and all the ways it is ignored and minimized. As a woman I reflected all the ways my pain has been ignored and minimized by doctors, nurses, bosses, and family. It was well done!