Two cancer survivors have filed a lawsuit against a hospital that lost the eggs that they had had harvested and stored there, and a third will soon join them.
All three women were told that their cancer treatments would likely leave them unable to have children, but delayed chemotherapy to undergo fertility treatments at University Hospitals, Cleveland.
But on March 3, they became three of at least 950 women whose preserved eggs were lost due to several stages of failure of a cryogenic tank, and the hospital announced last week that another 1,000 families may soon be notified.
Yesterday, the three women, accompanied by fabled women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred, held a press conference to tell the stories of their losses.
Sarah Mehl is a cancer survivor and one of the women suing University Hospitals, Cleveland after a cryogenic tank failure destroyed the eggs she froze before starting chemotherapy
Rachel Mehl was diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer in 2016 when she was just 38.
She has dreamt of nothing so clearly as being a mother someday, but was told that she would likely be left infertile by the chemotherapy treatments she needed to save her life.
But there was one last source of hope, Rachel said yesterday in a press conference: she could wait a few, critical weeks to begin her treatment in order to undergo fertility treatments and salvage as many of her eggs as possible.
The eggs represented ‘the babies so very alive inside of my heart,’ she said.
The choice was not an easy one, but it was a clear one for Rachel, now 40.
Like an increasing number of women – especially those given the devastating diagnosis of cancer at a young age – Rachel began to prepare herself to have eggs harvested, even as the cancer grew inside her.
She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but for the coming weeks travelled back and forth to University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio, where she was told specialists were best equipped to harvest and preserve her eggs.
Allred (left) comforted Sarah Deer (center) and Rachel Mehl (right) as the two survivors embraced during yesterday’s press conference
They extracted 19 eggs and Rachel joked with her friends that ‘there may be a reality show in my future.’
She spent most of 2016 in treatment, including chemotherapy, surgery and 30 rounds of radiation, but her cancer came back less than a year after she had gone into remission.
‘As either a direct or indirect result of cancer, I have lost so much: my hair, my ability to work at my full capacity, my dog, my deepest love, my best friend. I’ve lost the ability to be carefree and see the world through rose-colored glasses as I once did,’ Rachel said.
Then, on March 3, she received a ‘cold and impersonal’ letter from the fertility clinic. Rachel’s eggs were gone.
‘Now because of the carelessness of UH, I have lost all hopes of ever having biological children,’ she said.
Rachel’s eggs had been stored in a cryogenic tank, but she says she has since learned that the vessel was broken, but the hospital staff left the eggs where they were.
These tanks are typically hooked up to an alarm system that alerts hospital staff of any malfunctions that might endanger the eggs.
But Rachel says she learned that that too had been turned off and the facility ran out of its own tanks and was unable to even fill the existing one with liquid nitrogen.
The more she found out about the events leading up to the loss of her eggs, the more angry Rachel grew.
‘Cancer is a thief. It robs you of nearly everything and leaves you with almost zero control over your lie.
‘Having my eggs frozen empowered me, it was a light at the end of a very dark tunnel, but now that light is extinguished,’ Rachel said through her tears yesterday.
Sarah Deer was diagnosed with cancer at just 27 and is now joining Mehl in a suit against the hospital that lost her eggs
Now, she and another cancer survivor, Sarah Deer, have come together in a lawsuit against the hospital, and a third survivor, Danelle Yerkey, is expected to file suit in the coming days.
Gloria Allred, a civil rights attorney who has made headlines representing women’s rights – ranging from the family of OJ Simpson’s late wife, Nicole, in the trial against Simpson to the sexual assault case brought against Bill Cosby and will now represent former The Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos in a suit against the president – has signed on to the case.
At the press conference, Allred said: ‘It’s bad enough when women are treated with callous disregard in any area of life, but especially in this area which is so intimate and so personal and so life-changing, it has this enormous impact on them physically and emotionally.’
The case Allred is bringing in conjunction with an Ohio law firm is one of several against the hospital system, but she noted that a lawsuit is not enough, and urged legislative action.
‘An apology is not enough under these circumstances…The [Food and Drug Administration] should be regulating these as medical devices, which they are not. Regulation is not a dirty word,’ Allred said.