Word: patiently
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...unyielding enemy: infertility. They have come from around the globe to be treated by the world-renowned team of Obstetrician Patrick Steptoe and Reproductive Physiologist Robert Edwards, the men responsible for the birth of the world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978. Many of the patients have spent more than a decade trying to conceive a child, undergoing tests and surgery and taking fertility drugs. Most have waited more than a year just to be admitted to the clinic. Some have mortgaged their homes, sold their cars or borrowed from relatives to scrape together...
...minute it is ripe and immediately adding the sperm. This was quite a challenge, given that the collaborators spent most of their time 155 miles apart, with Edwards teaching physiology at Cambridge and Steptoe practicing obstetrics in the northwestern mill town of Oldham. Sometimes, when one of Steptoe's patients was about to ovulate, the doctor would have to summon his partner by phone. Edwards would then jump into his car and charge down the old country roads to Oldham. Once there, the two would remove the egg and mate it with sperm without wasting a moment; by the time...
...normally produced in the ovaries each month. Today in-vitro clinics help nature along by administering such drugs as Clomid and Pergonal, which can result in the development of more than one egg at a time. By using hormonal stimulants, Howard Jones "harvests" an average of 5.8 eggs per patient; it is possible to obtain as many as 17. "I felt like a pumpkin ready to burst," recalls Loretto Leyland, 33, of Melbourne, who produced eleven eggs at an Australian clinic, one of which became her daughter...
...retrieved during the three-to four-hour period when they are fully mature. At Bourn Hall, women remain on the premises, waiting for that moment to occur. Each morning, Steptoe, now 71 and walking with a cane, arrives on the ward to check their charts. The husband of one patient describes the scene: "Looking at a woman like an astonished owl, he'll say, 'Your estrogen is rising nicely.' The diffidence is his means of defense against desperate women. They think he can get them pregnant just by looking at them...
...compulsion to try again immediately after in vitro fails. Popela of Cleveland compares it to a gambling addiction: "Each time you get more desperate, each time you say, 'Just one more time.' " In fact, the odds do improve with each successive try, as doctors learn more about the individual patient. But the stakes are high: in the U.S., each attempt costs between $3,000 and $5,000, not including travel costs and time away from work. Lynn Kellert, 31, and her husband Mitchell, 34, of New York City, who tried seven times at Norfolk before finally achieving pregnancy, figure...