Healthvues

The Backstory
Infertility Explained came about from personal experience. Around 1990, my wife and I began to try to conceive to start our family. I had been working as a video producer, animator and interactive designer for about 10 years at the time. We figured that with everything we were told in high school about conceiving - meaning: it’s so easy to get pregnant that even a toilet seat is hostile territory! - we’d have no problem once we stopped using contraception. And as with most couples, especially at that time, we turned to her OB/GYN for help when things weren’t working.

I had the “boys” checked - they were fine. We tried Clomid for 18 months straight before it was protocol to only stay on it for 6 months. Nothing. We tried a hysterosalpingogram to see if her tubes were blocked (and to open them up if they were) - one was just about gone and the other was indeed blocked. But that didn’t work either. My wife developed an infection in her abdomen (not a result of the HSG) that nearly took her life and required hospitalization for a few weeks. During surgery, they discovered a massive amount of old scar tissue surrounding her tubes and ovaries that were most likely a result of an emergency appendectomy at age 3. She basically had no tubes left and only one ovary, but it appeared to be functional. Her OB/GYN (who did the surgery and got the infection under control) said that it would have been a miracle if she became pregnant at any time in her life. All that money spent on contraception over the years!

We saw an ad for a local infertility clinic that was starting in our town and decided to attend their informational seminar. We liked what we heard and made an appointment. The doctor was very caring and empathetic, but the only educational materials he could give us were very complicated JAMA type articles, filled with terms and language that would make a lawyer confused. He admitted that that was best available. An offhand comment of mine (”If you ever need a website…” - and he did) led to the development of what we think was the first interactive, humanistic educational program for infertility patients that was written BY patients - namely us. An Interactive Guide to Infertility was a comprehensive CD-ROM program that explained in detail the diagnostic tests and various procedures that constituted Advanced Reproductive Techniques (ART), complete with high-end graphics and video.

All this time, we were undergoing treatment, so we intimately knew from which we spoke. We went through - oh… I think 8 cycles of IVF treatments. She had another surgery to try to remove all that scare tissue and her bladder was nicked in the process. We went through more rounds of IVF with donor eggs. Contrary to logic - her uterus was perfectly fine and there was no reason why she shouldn’t carry an embryo to term - none of the embryos implanted ever took. The emotional toll on both of us (mainly her though) was extraordinarily difficult. Our friends and family never really understood what we were going through. However, our marriage was strong to begin with, we committed to being on the same page no matter what, and this actually made us stronger. I had been charged with exploring adoption as an option for us during the latter stages of our treatments (read the backstory on our Adoption Explained DVDs in this blog) and in early 2000, we decided to stop treatments altogether and get off the roller coaster.

The CD-ROM was very well received and I decided to try to take it national. We attended the 2002 American Society of Reproductive Medicine’s annual worldwide conference in Seattle as an exhibitor. The idea was try to sell the CD to other clinics and organizations as a customizable educational tool. It was very well received and garnered the interest of many organizations, including the FDA. I was empaneled to speak to during the conference’s video program and was informed that this was the first time a commercial product had ever been invited to present. Interest in the CD soared and I believe it is still in use by some clinics and pharmacies.

The CD was certainly rewarding but I had always wanted to include more of the emotional risks and effects of infertility. Alternative treatments, like mind/body medicine, relaxation techniques and acupunture, were beginning to be looked at as enhancements to ART. So I wanted to include those as well. I began working on version 2 of the CD and decided that a DVD would be more user friendly.

Through a chance set of circumstances, I was introduced to Dr. Alice Domar, a pioneer in mind/body medicine, women’s issues and infertility, and presented my ideas. The clinic she was associated with, Boston IVF, coincidentally was looking to enhance their own educational outreach programs. Names were passed, doors were opened, and before long, through Ali’s contacts and reputation, we had a long list of national experts and other patients signed on to help develop the content that was to become Infertility Explained. With the generous help from BostonIVF, the DVD was released in October of 2004 at the ASRM conference in Philadelphia.

Because of our personal experience with just about all kinds of infertility treatments for an extended period of time, I was able to interview these participants from the perspective of the patient and develop the DVD in a compassionate, decidedly humanistic viewpoint. It was an instant hit at the ASRM conference and the 2005 ACOG conference (OB/GYNs) in San Francisco and continues to garner media attention and sell well. We have received many heartwarming emails and letters from people who have been helped by the emotional aspects of the DVD - including some unexpected sources: the mother of a fertility patient thanked us because she had not idea what her daughter was going through. The mother did not have problems with pregnancy in her day and the daughter was not very open to discussing it because she didn’t think her mother understood. The mother told us that the DVD helped her to understand the emotional roller coaster her daughter was going through and now their relationship is better because of it. That’s the kind of stuff we were aiming for - helping people.

Will there be an update? We’ve talked about it but nothing’s in the works right now. While some of the treatments have been updated, they are still basically the same. And the market is now expanded as more fertile women are using ART to control their pregnancy. But the emotional aspects we discuss are still as powerful and universal as there a few years ago. That’s probably why it continues to be a viable and popular title. We may produce a Spanish language version one day (we’ve had enough inquiries to almost justify the cost). But for now, it remains our flagship DVD.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 8:12 am and is filed under Healthvues Products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.