December 3, 2025 • 39 mins
Word spreads that the fertility clinic has shut down without warning. As desperate patients band together, they realize their plans to get pregnant are now on hold. What will happen with the embryos stored inside the now shuttered clinic?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
On the morning of Friday, April fifth, twenty twenty four,
Mary Shaker walks into the Center for Reproductive Health and
takes a seat in the waiting room. It's the same
day as Sydney's appointment, though the two women don't know
each other. Like Sydney, Mary is also getting ready for
an embryo transfer. For the past few weeks, she's been
(00:27):
taking fertility drugs and coming into the clinic regularly for
blood work and ultrasounds.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I always have to take time off to go and
do all these appointments off work, and so I always
picked the earliest appointment possible.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Mary's transfer is about a week away, and she's counting
down the days.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm like just hoping that things are looking good and
we're progressing forward. I mean, I just remember being excited
that we were in the process of starting another transfer
that could lead to having a family.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Mary and Sydney's appointment and are the same morning, and
yet they're very different. Sydney leaves the clinic in a
panic with her world turned upside down, but Mary's appointment
isn't particularly notable at all.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
So at eight am, I show up and reception is
acting normal. I got my blood drawn. It was a
different lady than the normal forbotomist, but I didn't think
anything of it because I figured it seems like it
was like kind of a contracting company where it was
like they sent nurses to different areas anyway. So and
then I went and got my ultrasound, the ultrafound nurse
(01:37):
technician through my measurements, got dressed, and I left like
it was just the normal, checking like it was just normal.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Mary finishes up and goes to her job as a
veterinary technician. Nothing seems out of the ordinary until later
that afternoon.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
That's when I got a phone call at four pm
from my IVS nurse same you know, I'm so sorry
to tell you this, but you're transferred being pushed to
the following month. I'm livid at that point because I'm
already on the drugs, so I am I'm asking questions
like what are you talking about? Like my did everything
look okay with my blood work? Like is there anything
(02:16):
wrong with my ulstreet sound? Like why am I getting pushed?
And she just kept saying, you know, we're gonna have
a meeting next week. I'll know more next week.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
The only explanation she gets is that the center is
short stuffed, but the nurse instructs her to keep taking
the medication she's on, including loupron, a drug that, among
other things, stops you from ovulating. You have to inject it,
and there are a lot of side effects like joint pain, nausea,
hot flashes, and on top of that, it's expensive.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Lupron is like one thousand dollars a vile if you
don't have insurance, maybe even more it might be like
twelve hundred dollars a bio. You know, I just kept thinking, Okay,
well I'll just keep taking my leopron, but like update
me and like tell me what's going on. I'm like,
but I am. I am kissed and care OFFU at
this point because I knew something was wrong, Like I
(03:09):
knew something was not right with this claim.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Mary spends the weekend in anger and confusion. She's gone
through a lot to get her body ready for the
embryo transfer, and now another setback. Monday morning comes and goes,
and Mary hears nothing from the clinic that evening, more
than seventy two hours since she spoke with her IVF nurse.
(03:34):
Mary's coworker calls her and tells her to turn on
the local news now they're airing a piece about the
Center for Reproductive Health.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
For the past two years, the couple's driven to midtown
Nashville for fertility treatments at the Center for Reproductive Health. Unexpectedly,
at Friday's appointment, a receptionist shared bad news. The staff
just received a letter reading, unforeseen circumstances have led to
a financial deficit. Regrettably, you will not receive your paychecks tomorrow.
(04:05):
As a result, people walked off the job.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
There.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
On news Channel five in Nashville is Sydney and her
husband Austin.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
I'm having to feel grief, almost grieving the plans that
I had made him, grieving the life that I thought
I was going to have this summer.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
In Nashville news Channel five.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Mary is stunned. If this is true, if the clinic
is going under, it means her embryo transfer is probably
not going to happen either. She doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
I was so confused and scared and sad, and just
like angry. It felt like another lost chance to start
a family.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
The next morning, Tuesday, April ninth, Mary's husband decides to
go to the Center for Reproductive Health himself to see
what's going on. The news report was concerning, but maybe
there was some kind of misunderstanding, or maybe the financial
issues have been worked out.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
He wanted to just talk to somebody, like you wanted
to know there are somebody there and see if he
could get any information, you know, not just from the news,
but from somebody at the clinic.
Speaker 7 (05:21):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Mary's husband says that when he arrives, the clinic doors
are unlocked. He walks in and what he sees confirms
the couple's fears. There's no one behind the front desk,
and the room is quiet except for the phones, which
are ringing NonStop. It feels like a ghost town or
(05:42):
a scene from one of those disaster movies where everyone's
picked up and left mid sentence. On the reception counter
is a set of keys with a sticky note that
reads thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
Any bad person could have just literally crawled over the
counter and gotten people well medical records. Could have walked
around the clinic like there's just nobody there.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I'm Melissa Jelson from School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
This is what happened in Nashville Episode two. The stakeout.
Mary isn't the only patient who learns that the Center
for Reproductive Health is closing from the news. In the
(06:36):
hours after Sydney's news report airs, panic spreads. Patients report
calling the clinic and no one picks up. Many send
emails to the patient portal with frantic questions. Some request
their medical records and get them. Others get no response
at all. Even the clinic's website remains unchanged, as if
(06:59):
nothing's happened. Sydney, it seems, is the only person with
any information, and even hers is limited. Desperate for answers,
patients begin tracking her down on social media, flooding her
with messages. Is the clinic going to reopen? How did
you get your embryos out? What should we do? Sydney
(07:21):
can't offer much. She was simply lucky tipped off just
before the doors were shut, but she wants to help.
Speaker 8 (07:29):
I looked at my husband and I was like, I
think I'm going to make a Facebook page for all
the families that are going through this, because that way
we can all just kind of have each other. I
don't have the answers, but maybe like all together we
can kind of figure out what's going.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
On Mary quickly joins the group. Even if no one
knows much yet, at least they can compare notes, share
scraps of intel, and try to piece together what's happening.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
Everyone's kind of posting, trying to get information, seeing if
anybody's gotten through the phone lines, if anyone's gotten an email,
because the phone line's just ring and ring and ring.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
There are patients like Mary and Sidney who have been
taking hormonal medications for weeks, preparing their bodies for an
embryo transfer. They've already paid for the procedures, procedures now
indefinitely on hold. There are patients who aren't actively in treatment,
but are storing their embryos there for future use, trusting
(08:28):
that they are safe and will be available when they
need them. And then there are people like Taylor Turner,
whose window to have a child had already been narrowing.
Speaker 9 (08:40):
You're taught so long, like don't touch another person, or
you're going to get pregnant. Like growing up, it was
like it's, you know, don't get pregnant, don't get pregnant.
So I think I just thought it was going to
be an easy.
Speaker 7 (08:53):
Thing to do.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Taylor and her husband had been trying for a few
years to get pregnant before they became patients at the
Center for Reproductive.
Speaker 9 (09:02):
Health, seeing people around you getting pregnant, and you know,
it feels like every time you open up a social
media platform, it's in your face someone's getting pregnant, having
their second, their third kid. So it just it's tough.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Taylor had just started the fertility process when she got
a devastating diagnosis a brain tumor. She needed surgery immediately.
Everything else was put on pause. The recovery process was long,
but as soon as she was able, Taylor began an
egg retrieval cycle. If there was any chance she could
(09:43):
have a child using her own eggs, she needed to
do this immediately before undergoing radiation.
Speaker 9 (09:50):
They retrieved nine eggs, five I believe got to the
blast desist stage. I maybe butchering that name. I'm sorry
if I am.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
So.
Speaker 9 (10:01):
Five of them got to that stage, and then we
sent them off to get tested.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
After testing, Taylor ended up with one genetically normal embryo.
Speaker 9 (10:12):
We have a highly graded boy embryo that we lovingly
call five double.
Speaker 8 (10:17):
A, so we always referred to him as that.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
This one embryo five double A, which is in storage
at the Center for Reproductive Health. Is her only chance
for a biological child.
Speaker 9 (10:32):
I do have a progesterone receptive tumor, and I can't
do IVF again. We have a lot banking on the
one embryo that we have.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Taylor's situation was unique, but the fear and uncertainty she
felt wasn't. One patient described that stretch of chaos, not
knowing what to do or how to do it, or
whether their eggs and embryos were being protected as quote
one of the worst experiences of her life. Across the
Facebook group, patients were in different stages of treatment, but
(11:07):
nearly all were bound by the same anxiety that what
they had stored inside the clinic might be lost. For many,
those embryos weren't just biological material. They were the result
of years of hope, effort, and sacrifice. Patients didn't know
what was going on behind the scenes, if doctor Vascuz
(11:28):
was working to keep the embryos safe or trying to
set up a way for patients to transition care to
another clinic. From their perspective, they were on their own.
Speaker 8 (11:39):
I think me and a couple others realized this is bad.
This is not normal. They were just going to ignore us.
They weren't gonna write us back, they weren't going to
answer us. They had truly closed their clinic. I think
that's when we realized, like, we're going to have to
do something because they're not going to basically help.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
The clinic doesn't release a statement until April sixteenth, a
full week after Sydney goes public. It assures patients that
they have and will continue to quote, maintain the safety
and integrity of your embryos, eggs and sperm samples, and
that they will assist patients in getting medical records and
in transferring their embryos, eggs and sperm to another clinic.
(12:26):
But for some patients, this delayed statement brings little solace.
Speaker 8 (12:31):
With IVF, you already struggle with not having controlled the situation,
but with this, I truly felt like I couldn't even
figure out what was going on.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I've been dealing with impertility for over five years. All
of the testing we had done, there's not a single
test to this day that they can show why I
have impertility. I'm just the couple that have unexplained impertility,
which is twenty five five percent of Apple with in pavilion.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
This is Mary again, the veterinary technician who had an
appointment at the clinic on its very last day of operation.
Even though she didn't know it then. By the time
she arrived at the Center for Reproductive Health that morning,
her fertility journey had been long and exhausting. She and
her husband started trying for a baby when she was
(13:24):
just twenty six, early by most standards, but by her
late twenties it was clear she needed help. She had
started treatment elsewhere with a series of what's called intrauterine
insemination or iuis. This is a procedure where sperm is
placed directly into the uterus to increase the chances of fertilization.
(13:46):
It's less invasive and less expensive than IVF and often
the first step in fertility care. Mary tried one, then another,
and another five In total. She got pregnate twice, but
both ended in miscarriage. None of them led to a baby. Eventually,
(14:07):
she and her husband decided to move on to IVF,
but there was a problem. The veterinary hospital where Mary
worked didn't offer insurance coverage for it, and paying out
of pocket for IVF can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Many people pursuing IVF in the US are in the
same position, shouldering the cost on their own.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
We, of course, were just running out of money. I'm
pretty sure our credit cards had plenty on them, and
so we had to kind of walk away for a
little while. And then my hospital got new benefits kind Body,
meaning I thought I finally won the jackpot.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Kind Body is a fertility service that some employers offer
as part of their health care benefits, allowing access to
a variety of fertility care providers. Full disclosure. I also
use kind Body for fertility treatments. In Mary's case, only
one clinic in Nashville accepted kind Body, the Center for
(15:10):
Reproductive Health, As.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Soon as the benefits hit of January twenty twenty three,
I was in their office.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Mary's first IVF cycle and egg retrieval resulted in ten eggs.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
But only four for life that turned into embryos. And
then after we sent those four off to testing, we
only got one viable embryo that really sucked.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
The results were disappointing, but also fairly typical. There's this
stereotype that fertility doctors or mad scientists trying to get
a monstrous number of eggs just because when in fact,
in most cases, you need to start with a large
number of eggs in order to end up with enough
(15:57):
embryos for one or two live births. When I started IVF,
I was told to expect that about half of the
eggs retrieved could be lost at each step of the process,
during fertilization, during the weight to see if they grew
into embryos, and after genetic testing. So if you start
(16:19):
with twenty mature eggs, you might end up with four
or five viable embryos, and that might only end in one,
maybe two pregnancies, and that's if you're really lucky. Still,
no matter how much Mary might have prepared for this reality,
seeing her numbers diminish from ten to one felt like
(16:41):
a gut punch.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I was super devastated, but.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
She still had one healthy embryo, and in June twenty
twenty three, doctor Hime Vasquez performed the transfer.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I remember crying really hard after they said they were
all done, because I think the moment of leading up
had finally hit me that like, Okay, this is you
or die, Like this this is it. Your one embryo
is in and in ten days, you're going to find
out if you're going to be a mom or not.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Eager to see if it worked. Mary took a home
pregnancy test and it was positive.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
And I was seen the line get darker, so I
was like, oh my gosh, this is it. And then
the day before I was supposed to go in to
do blood work, the line was lighter and I dark
to panic. And then the next morning it was even
(17:41):
lighter again. Like I just remember, I couldn't.
Speaker 6 (17:46):
Even hardly work. I was so distracted.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And then I went in for my blood work and
it showed HPV of like twenty, which is not good.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Mary was having a chemical pregnancy, which is a very
miscarriage that occurs shortly after the embryo implants. Chemical pregnancies
may account for fifty to seventy five percent of all miscarriages,
though many people don't even know they're pregnant, as it
happens so early on in the process.
Speaker 10 (18:15):
You just not okay.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Act that for a while. I went to counseling. I
joined the support group that I found for women that
had been the IDF. I mean, I just had to
build up my hope again because we would have to
go through another round of IVF to try and have
a baby, and so we were back at square one.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Mary went through another egg retrieval, but it was even
less successful than her first. This time she only got
a single egg and it didn't fertilize. That's when doctor
Vaskez suggested she consider a new path using donor eggs,
and he had a way to make that happen. Outside
of his medical practice, Vazquez ran a separate business called
(19:00):
the American Embryo Adoption Agency or AEAA. Through AEAA, patients
who are struggling to conceive with their own eggs could
purchase donated eggs or embryos, often the leftovers from other
couples IVF cycles.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
I had to finally give up on that they would
be a fifty percent me running around in this world,
and that I wanted I wanted to be a mom
more than I wanted to just have a genetically binded child.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Using a Christmas bonus, Mary and her husband purchased ten
donor eggs for ten thousand dollars. They were fertilized with
her husband's sperm at the Center for Reproductive Health. Of
the ten, two developed into genetically normal embryos. Mary is
about to transfer one of these embryos when the clinic
(19:55):
shuts down. Now her embryos are locked inside. On Friday,
April twelfth, exactly one week from her last appointment, Mary
sees a Facebook post from another patient with an urgent
announcement Doctor Vaskaz is in the office right now for
(20:15):
patients who are desperately trying to get a hold of
someone at the clinic. This feels at least promising. Maybe
doctor Vaskeez can help. Mary jumps into action.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
At that point, everyone is just like, oh my god,
we have to get down there. Like people started showing
up at this point because we want answers, we want
to know what's going on, pretty much anyone that didn't
have to be like at a cropt in jodge of
down there. We were thinking he would recognize as and
he would want to as a decent physician, Like he
would be like, hey, this is just like a misunderstanding,
(20:46):
or like he would talk to you, you would think.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
As Mary steps off the elevator onto the fourth floor,
her heart is pounding. She sees seven other women and
already gathered in the hallway outside the clinic through the
glass doors. The waiting room looks the same, just empty,
and today the doors are locked. They don't see doctor Vaskez,
(21:13):
so it's unclear if he's even still there, But on
the off chance that he is, they wait. The patients
want to talk to him if he won't answer their questions.
At the very least, they're hoping they can get copies
of their medical records. Documentation that shows their fertility history,
improves their legal claim to what remains inside their embryos,
(21:38):
eggs and sperm, what the industry refers to more vaguely
as genetic material. Without these records, they can't just move
to another clinic for care. They can't transport their embryos,
they can't even begin to try to get pregnant.
Speaker 6 (21:56):
We're just all trying to figure out, like how do
we get him to come out, Like how do we
get him to know so that we don't mean any harm.
We just want our medical records.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
As they're waiting, the elevator doors open and another woman emerges,
heading towards the clinic. She walks up to the glass door,
shakes the handle, and the pier is confused that the
door won't open.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
She thinks she's coming by just to pick up a script.
She has no idea that the clinic clothes. I'm like, hey,
you know what's going on, and she's like, no, i
just got back into town from vacation. I'm just to
start my IVS this week. And I was like, I
think you should watch this news report that came out.
It's going to be a lot of information, and we're
(22:39):
all kind of in limbo, like we all don't know
what's really going on. And she starts crying and she's like,
I just gave this man thirty thousand dollars in cash
two weeks ago to start this IBS. It shouldn't have
been left on the patients to tell other patients about
the horrific event. Yeah, I felt like I had just
(22:59):
like crushed a woman's soul.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
An hour or two goes by, no one comes to
the door, and then a couple of nurses get off
the elevator. They're not employees of the Center for Reproductive Health. Instead,
judging by their lab coats, they work for Ovation, an
independent embryology lab that partners with another nearby fertility clinic.
(23:24):
It seems that they came to CRH just.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
To help out, and we're like, what are you guys
doing here, Like are you checking on the embryos, And
they're like, yeah, we are just here to check on
the embryos to make sure the tanks have nitrogen.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
The women start begging the nurses to help, to check
if doctor Vazquez is inside and if so, tell him
to please come out.
Speaker 6 (23:45):
It was such a horrific thing to see. Women were
all crying because if this is closing, nobody doctors were
gonna they're gonna repeat yests. They're gonna not know what's
gone on, Like we need our medical records. They felt
so bad for us, they were fugging us. They apologize.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
The Ovation nurses tell the women to write down their
names and they will search for their medical records while
they're inside. They make their way through the clinic doors
and disappear into the back.
Speaker 6 (24:13):
An hour goes by and the women come out and
they're like, you guys were trying, but everything is so unorganized.
We can't find a lot of your guys' stuff. Half
of it's in a paper form, half of it's on digital,
half of it's not uploaded. I just remember all this
shaking and scared.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
The Ovation nurses are able to pass along some medical records,
but not Mary's.
Speaker 6 (24:40):
She just kept saying, I just can't find the proof
of the embryos information for you. Like I was terrified.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
I was, Oh my god, it.
Speaker 6 (24:48):
Was the out of all of our journey. That was
the worst moment ever. I was scared there was a
proof that I owned my embryos, that they were mine.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Salvation nurses can't stay for long. They have to get
back to work. But on their way out, they mentioned
that doctor Vasquez is actually there in the office. He
doesn't emerge from the back, but Mary isn't ready to
give up, not.
Speaker 6 (25:14):
Yet, and I was like, I'm not leaving. Then all
of a sudden, we hear the elevator open up again
and we hear this woman in Highfields and she walks
right into the clinic like she owns the place, like
a woman in a suit. One of the girls I
was there with, Megan, literally yells across the lobby and
she goes, hey, who are you, And she goes, I'm
(25:34):
his attorney. Her name was Dixie, and she looks like it,
let me tell you. And that's when Megan's like, please,
you have to help us, Like Mary needs her medical records,
she needs proof of that she has embryos in there.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Dixie is empathetic to her plight. She lets Mary inside
the clinic and tells her to take a seat in
the lobby. Dixie heads off to search for Mary's records, warning,
take a while, she.
Speaker 6 (26:01):
Would be nice.
Speaker 7 (26:02):
She was.
Speaker 6 (26:02):
Actually, she was trying to defend him to me. She
was like, you know, his staff walcked out. We want
to help the patients, and like at that point I
was like, I don't care. I was like, to please
find my medical record.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Mary sits alone in the empty waiting room. It's strange.
There's no receptionist tapping on her keyboard, no other patients
chatting in hushed tones, no movement at all. The normal
rhythm of the clinic, which is so familiar to her,
is absent. The quiet makes her uncomfortable. More time passes,
(26:43):
Dixie finds some paperwork, but it's not what Mary needs.
Then Dixie calls an it person on the phone to help,
and finally Mary gets an email with a thousand pages
of documents attached. She quickly forwards it to her husband.
Speaker 6 (26:59):
Then I'm like, I need I start looking to this
email right now before I leave. I need you to
find in a thousand pages proof that the embryos are
genetically like half you, we own them, and that they
are store here at this lab. I just needed that
proof before I walked up, because I know, thank God,
I knew that would be the last time I would
ever be in that lobby.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Soon, Mary's husband texts her that he's found the needed documents.
Just as a couple of new women show up at
the glass door and rattle the handle.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
I'm thinking, oh my god, it's going to be more patient.
They're going to see me in here. I'm going to
get their hopeful. They start pounding on the glass door
and they look at me and they point at the knob,
and that's when the attorney showed back up. So the
attorney Lesson opens the door and is like, we're not
open right now. We will contact. They're like, no, we
are here from the state of Tennessee. And then the
(27:51):
attorney literally she looked at me and she said, do
you have everything? And I said, yes, I do, and
that was it. I walked out of there.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
As Mary leaves the Center for Reproductive Health, the new
women enter the clinic. They aren't patients though they're inspectors
from the Tennessee Health Facilities Commission. Their job is to
investigate complaints about healthcare providers. They received reports that patients
have been unable to contact anyone at the clinic, and
(28:24):
they're there for an unannounced inspection Dixie, Doctor Vasquez's lawyer
brings them back into the office. An affidavit by one
of the inspectors, Deborah Verna, lays out exactly what they saw.
The Tennessee Health Facilities Commission declined to make her available
for an interview, but here are parts of her affidavit
(28:46):
and the resulting report read by a voice actor.
Speaker 11 (28:50):
I observed that there were no staff members present besides
doctor him Vaskez. Doctor Vasquez told us that the clinic
was not closed posed, it was just experiencing low volume.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Doctor Vazquez gives the inspectors a tour of the facility.
They are very eager to check on the cryogenic tanks,
as a number of patients had expressed worry that their
embryos might not be receiving adequate care.
Speaker 11 (29:18):
We asked doctor Vasquez how many embryos were currently being stored.
At first, he said he didn't know. He later stated
there were between eight hundred to one thousand embryos.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Court documents later show there were one thousand, one hundred
and eighty eight frozen embryos at the clinic, several hundred
more than his estimate. Doctor Vazquez leads them to the
cryo tank storage room. Just outside the door, the inspectors
spot a tank without an alarm system. It's labeled both
backup storage and mice embryos. As they prepare to enter
(29:54):
the room, the inspectors ask if they should put on
personal protective equipment. Doctor Vazquez tells them it's not necessary. Then,
in front of them, he begins opening the tanks.
Speaker 11 (30:07):
I observed doctor Vasquez opening embryo and sperm cryogenic storage
tanks without using personal protective equipment, which is a violation
of infection control protocols. When I raised the issue with
doctor Vasquez, he stated he did not need to use PPE.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
The inspectors watch as doctor Vasquez removes the plug from
a cryogenic tank and places it on a stainless steel
rolling cart. The cart is visibly soiled, covered in an
unknown sticky substance, use tweezers, broken class laboratory straws, and
a wadded up paper towel. The investigators also take a
(30:46):
closer look at the tanks themselves. They had been tipped
off by the clinic's former embryologist that one of the
tanks might be leaking, they wanted to see for themselves.
Speaker 11 (30:59):
I did not observe a puncture, but I was unable
to fully determine if the tank had developed a leak
because there were no documented temperature readings of any of
the storage tanks since April fifth.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
As the inspector wrote in her report, any facility with
cryogenic storage tanks is federally mandated to monitor and document
their temperatures regularly, but there was no temperature documentation since Friday,
April fifth, a full week before. When Verna asked doctor
Vasquez about the missing paperwork, he has no explanation. Inspectors
(31:39):
asked doctor Vasquez to demonstrate the procedures for servicing the tanks,
but when he goes to measure the liquid nitrogen, the
inspectors say he's off by seven centimeters. Verner questions Vasquez
about it, but he doubles down and insists he's right.
Speaker 11 (31:55):
Doctor Vazkez appeared to be unable to accurately measure the
liquid nitrogen and record the measurements.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
They asked doctor Vazkez for a copy of the facility's
written policies, but he can't find them. Verna finds something, though,
when she checks out a binder laying on the countertop
in the lab. It's filled with old documents dated two
thousand and one. The Health Department later notes in its
report that crh's policies and procedures had not been updated
(32:28):
to reflect current professionally recognized standards of practice for over
two decades. The inspectors conclude their visit and leave the
Center for Reproductive Health, but the investigation is not over.
They call an embryologist who had recently worked at the clinic,
now living in Florida. She tells them that she's owed
(32:51):
more than fifty thousand dollars for past services and shares
her concerns about the embryos. The embryologists declined to speak
on the record with me, so here's what she told investigators.
According to their report, again read by a voice actor.
Speaker 10 (33:08):
His behavior is like a caged animal and he's dissociated
from reality. He'll be talking with each hip or like
everything is great and it's not.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
The clinic's former embryologist begs someone to intervene.
Speaker 10 (33:21):
He's not set up for an emergency. Someone needs to
take care of it. If something goes wrong with one
of the tanks, he doesn't know what to do, and
he has no one now that can do this. All
of his staff is gone.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I asked doctor Vazquez's lawyer, Dixie Cooper, about the claims
that he was unable to tend to the cryogenic tanks properly.
She said the inspectors were incorrect and that he was
in the clinic every day checking them regardless. On April
twenty six, exactly three weeks after the clinic's final day
(33:56):
in operation, someone else does step in to take over,
I said, breaking news to.
Speaker 6 (34:01):
Tell you about.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Tennessee's attorney general is suing a Nashville doctor. Doctor Vazquez
and the businesses tied to his fertility clinic are sued
by the Tennessee Attorney General. It's not a criminal case
or even a medical malpractice suit. Instead, Vazqaz is accused
of violating the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits false
(34:23):
advertising and misrepresentation about goods and services. The gist of
the lawsuit is this, the patients considered consumers paid for
services and a certain level of care they didn't get.
The clinic's promotional material boasted that patients would receive consistent, personalized,
(34:43):
high quality care, and if they ultimately decided to switch
to another fertility clinic, the Center for Reproductive Health would
facilitate the transfer of care to ensure an easy and
seamless transition. Obviously, when the clinics shut down, that's not
what many patients experienced. The state estimated that doctor Vazquez's
(35:05):
patients had paid him tens of thousands of dollars for
services that they had not received.
Speaker 8 (35:11):
The way that they do it is you pay for
your transfer before the cycle, before they even start you
on the medicine line. You have to pay for your transfer.
We had already paid for the transfer. We already pay
for all of the stuff that goes with it.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
The Attorney General's office also obtains a temporary restraining order,
freezing Vazquez's assets and effectively removing him from control. The
court quickly appoints a third party, called a receiver, to
manage the closure and oversee the clinic storage tanks until
they can be moved elsewhere. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Scrimmatti
(35:47):
gives an interview with news Channel five to address the
immediate concerns of the patients, namely if their genetic material
stored at the clinic is okay.
Speaker 12 (35:59):
The tanks are top off to the best of my knowledge,
They've been kept to an adequate level throughout the transition,
but that's only because a lot of people worked very
hard to make sure that they were as this thing collapsed.
That was a priority for everybody. They wanted to be
sure that there was not some failure of the cooling system.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
For patients, it feels like a turning point. With Vasquez
out and someone new in charge, surely things will start moving.
They just need their medical records. They just need to
get access to their embryos. It seems like it should
be straightforward, but anyone who's dealt with the government knows
everything moves at a sluggish pace. For these patients who
(36:46):
are raising the clock to get pregnant, any delay could
mean the difference between having a child or not.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
For us, we just can't get started without our embryos,
so we're literally just stuck. It feels like I just
keep getting older and my embryos keep sitting at.
Speaker 8 (37:03):
A tage.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Next time on what Happened in Nashville. On the Facebook group,
the women are talking to each other, sharing their experiences
at the clinic, and as they compare notes and research,
they discover what appears to be another bombshell about someone
else working at doctor Vasquez's clinic.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
There's no mention of him with the board, there's no
mention of him with a license in the state of Tennessee.
Speaker 8 (37:40):
There's nothing.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
The Metro Nashville Police Department and the Department of Health
launch investigations.
Speaker 7 (37:47):
I don't want anybody touching me. I don't want my
own husband touching me like. You just feel disgusting, you
feel violated, you feel manipulated, like all of the emotions.
You know at that point you're deceived.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
What Happened in Nashville is a production of School of
Humans and iHeart Podcasts, written, reported, and hosted by me
Melissa Jelson. Our producer is Etily's Perez. Our senior producer
is Amelia Brock, with additional production by Emily Seiner and
Carl Catle. Theme song by Jesse Nice Swanger, Sound design,
(38:23):
scoring and mixing by Jeremy Thal and Jesse Nye Swanger.
Fact checking by Savannah hug Lee and Austin Thompson. Our
production manager is Daisy Church. Executive producers are Jason English,
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you're enjoying
the show, tell everyone you know and don't forget to
(38:43):
leave a rating in your favorite podcast app. Tune in
again next week for what happened in Nashville
On the morning of Friday, April fifth, twenty twenty four,
Mary Shaker walks into the Center for Reproductive Health and
takes a seat in the waiting room. It's the same
day as Sydney's appointment, though the two women don't know
each other. Like Sydney, Mary is also getting ready for
an embryo transfer. For the past few weeks, she's been
(00:27):
taking fertility drugs and coming into the clinic regularly for
blood work and ultrasounds.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I always have to take time off to go and
do all these appointments off work, and so I always
picked the earliest appointment possible.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Mary's transfer is about a week away, and she's counting
down the days.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm like just hoping that things are looking good and
we're progressing forward. I mean, I just remember being excited
that we were in the process of starting another transfer
that could lead to having a family.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Mary and Sydney's appointment and are the same morning, and
yet they're very different. Sydney leaves the clinic in a
panic with her world turned upside down, but Mary's appointment
isn't particularly notable at all.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
So at eight am, I show up and reception is
acting normal. I got my blood drawn. It was a
different lady than the normal forbotomist, but I didn't think
anything of it because I figured it seems like it
was like kind of a contracting company where it was
like they sent nurses to different areas anyway. So and
then I went and got my ultrasound, the ultrafound nurse
(01:37):
technician through my measurements, got dressed, and I left like
it was just the normal, checking like it was just normal.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Mary finishes up and goes to her job as a
veterinary technician. Nothing seems out of the ordinary until later
that afternoon.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
That's when I got a phone call at four pm
from my IVS nurse same you know, I'm so sorry
to tell you this, but you're transferred being pushed to
the following month. I'm livid at that point because I'm
already on the drugs, so I am I'm asking questions
like what are you talking about? Like my did everything
look okay with my blood work? Like is there anything
(02:16):
wrong with my ulstreet sound? Like why am I getting pushed?
And she just kept saying, you know, we're gonna have
a meeting next week. I'll know more next week.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
The only explanation she gets is that the center is
short stuffed, but the nurse instructs her to keep taking
the medication she's on, including loupron, a drug that, among
other things, stops you from ovulating. You have to inject it,
and there are a lot of side effects like joint pain, nausea,
hot flashes, and on top of that, it's expensive.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Lupron is like one thousand dollars a vile if you
don't have insurance, maybe even more it might be like
twelve hundred dollars a bio. You know, I just kept thinking, Okay,
well I'll just keep taking my leopron, but like update
me and like tell me what's going on. I'm like,
but I am. I am kissed and care OFFU at
this point because I knew something was wrong, Like I
(03:09):
knew something was not right with this claim.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Mary spends the weekend in anger and confusion. She's gone
through a lot to get her body ready for the
embryo transfer, and now another setback. Monday morning comes and goes,
and Mary hears nothing from the clinic that evening, more
than seventy two hours since she spoke with her IVF nurse.
(03:34):
Mary's coworker calls her and tells her to turn on
the local news now they're airing a piece about the
Center for Reproductive Health.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
For the past two years, the couple's driven to midtown
Nashville for fertility treatments at the Center for Reproductive Health. Unexpectedly,
at Friday's appointment, a receptionist shared bad news. The staff
just received a letter reading, unforeseen circumstances have led to
a financial deficit. Regrettably, you will not receive your paychecks tomorrow.
(04:05):
As a result, people walked off the job.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
There.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
On news Channel five in Nashville is Sydney and her
husband Austin.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
I'm having to feel grief, almost grieving the plans that
I had made him, grieving the life that I thought
I was going to have this summer.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
In Nashville news Channel five.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Mary is stunned. If this is true, if the clinic
is going under, it means her embryo transfer is probably
not going to happen either. She doesn't know what to do.
Speaker 6 (04:40):
I was so confused and scared and sad, and just
like angry. It felt like another lost chance to start
a family.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
The next morning, Tuesday, April ninth, Mary's husband decides to
go to the Center for Reproductive Health himself to see
what's going on. The news report was concerning, but maybe
there was some kind of misunderstanding, or maybe the financial
issues have been worked out.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
He wanted to just talk to somebody, like you wanted
to know there are somebody there and see if he
could get any information, you know, not just from the news,
but from somebody at the clinic.
Speaker 7 (05:21):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Mary's husband says that when he arrives, the clinic doors
are unlocked. He walks in and what he sees confirms
the couple's fears. There's no one behind the front desk,
and the room is quiet except for the phones, which
are ringing NonStop. It feels like a ghost town or
(05:42):
a scene from one of those disaster movies where everyone's
picked up and left mid sentence. On the reception counter
is a set of keys with a sticky note that
reads thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
Any bad person could have just literally crawled over the
counter and gotten people well medical records. Could have walked
around the clinic like there's just nobody there.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I'm Melissa Jelson from School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts.
This is what happened in Nashville Episode two. The stakeout.
Mary isn't the only patient who learns that the Center
for Reproductive Health is closing from the news. In the
(06:36):
hours after Sydney's news report airs, panic spreads. Patients report
calling the clinic and no one picks up. Many send
emails to the patient portal with frantic questions. Some request
their medical records and get them. Others get no response
at all. Even the clinic's website remains unchanged, as if
(06:59):
nothing's happened. Sydney, it seems, is the only person with
any information, and even hers is limited. Desperate for answers,
patients begin tracking her down on social media, flooding her
with messages. Is the clinic going to reopen? How did
you get your embryos out? What should we do? Sydney
(07:21):
can't offer much. She was simply lucky tipped off just
before the doors were shut, but she wants to help.
Speaker 8 (07:29):
I looked at my husband and I was like, I
think I'm going to make a Facebook page for all
the families that are going through this, because that way
we can all just kind of have each other. I
don't have the answers, but maybe like all together we
can kind of figure out what's going.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
On Mary quickly joins the group. Even if no one
knows much yet, at least they can compare notes, share
scraps of intel, and try to piece together what's happening.
Speaker 6 (07:55):
Everyone's kind of posting, trying to get information, seeing if
anybody's gotten through the phone lines, if anyone's gotten an email,
because the phone line's just ring and ring and ring.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
There are patients like Mary and Sidney who have been
taking hormonal medications for weeks, preparing their bodies for an
embryo transfer. They've already paid for the procedures, procedures now
indefinitely on hold. There are patients who aren't actively in treatment,
but are storing their embryos there for future use, trusting
(08:28):
that they are safe and will be available when they
need them. And then there are people like Taylor Turner,
whose window to have a child had already been narrowing.
Speaker 9 (08:40):
You're taught so long, like don't touch another person, or
you're going to get pregnant. Like growing up, it was
like it's, you know, don't get pregnant, don't get pregnant.
So I think I just thought it was going to
be an easy.
Speaker 7 (08:53):
Thing to do.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Taylor and her husband had been trying for a few
years to get pregnant before they became patients at the
Center for Reproductive.
Speaker 9 (09:02):
Health, seeing people around you getting pregnant, and you know,
it feels like every time you open up a social
media platform, it's in your face someone's getting pregnant, having
their second, their third kid. So it just it's tough.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Taylor had just started the fertility process when she got
a devastating diagnosis a brain tumor. She needed surgery immediately.
Everything else was put on pause. The recovery process was long,
but as soon as she was able, Taylor began an
egg retrieval cycle. If there was any chance she could
(09:43):
have a child using her own eggs, she needed to
do this immediately before undergoing radiation.
Speaker 9 (09:50):
They retrieved nine eggs, five I believe got to the
blast desist stage. I maybe butchering that name. I'm sorry
if I am.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
So.
Speaker 9 (10:01):
Five of them got to that stage, and then we
sent them off to get tested.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
After testing, Taylor ended up with one genetically normal embryo.
Speaker 9 (10:12):
We have a highly graded boy embryo that we lovingly
call five double.
Speaker 8 (10:17):
A, so we always referred to him as that.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
This one embryo five double A, which is in storage
at the Center for Reproductive Health. Is her only chance
for a biological child.
Speaker 9 (10:32):
I do have a progesterone receptive tumor, and I can't
do IVF again. We have a lot banking on the
one embryo that we have.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Taylor's situation was unique, but the fear and uncertainty she
felt wasn't. One patient described that stretch of chaos, not
knowing what to do or how to do it, or
whether their eggs and embryos were being protected as quote
one of the worst experiences of her life. Across the
Facebook group, patients were in different stages of treatment, but
(11:07):
nearly all were bound by the same anxiety that what
they had stored inside the clinic might be lost. For many,
those embryos weren't just biological material. They were the result
of years of hope, effort, and sacrifice. Patients didn't know
what was going on behind the scenes, if doctor Vascuz
(11:28):
was working to keep the embryos safe or trying to
set up a way for patients to transition care to
another clinic. From their perspective, they were on their own.
Speaker 8 (11:39):
I think me and a couple others realized this is bad.
This is not normal. They were just going to ignore us.
They weren't gonna write us back, they weren't going to
answer us. They had truly closed their clinic. I think
that's when we realized, like, we're going to have to
do something because they're not going to basically help.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
The clinic doesn't release a statement until April sixteenth, a
full week after Sydney goes public. It assures patients that
they have and will continue to quote, maintain the safety
and integrity of your embryos, eggs and sperm samples, and
that they will assist patients in getting medical records and
in transferring their embryos, eggs and sperm to another clinic.
(12:26):
But for some patients, this delayed statement brings little solace.
Speaker 8 (12:31):
With IVF, you already struggle with not having controlled the situation,
but with this, I truly felt like I couldn't even
figure out what was going on.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I've been dealing with impertility for over five years. All
of the testing we had done, there's not a single
test to this day that they can show why I
have impertility. I'm just the couple that have unexplained impertility,
which is twenty five five percent of Apple with in pavilion.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
This is Mary again, the veterinary technician who had an
appointment at the clinic on its very last day of operation.
Even though she didn't know it then. By the time
she arrived at the Center for Reproductive Health that morning,
her fertility journey had been long and exhausting. She and
her husband started trying for a baby when she was
(13:24):
just twenty six, early by most standards, but by her
late twenties it was clear she needed help. She had
started treatment elsewhere with a series of what's called intrauterine
insemination or iuis. This is a procedure where sperm is
placed directly into the uterus to increase the chances of fertilization.
(13:46):
It's less invasive and less expensive than IVF and often
the first step in fertility care. Mary tried one, then another,
and another five In total. She got pregnate twice, but
both ended in miscarriage. None of them led to a baby. Eventually,
(14:07):
she and her husband decided to move on to IVF,
but there was a problem. The veterinary hospital where Mary
worked didn't offer insurance coverage for it, and paying out
of pocket for IVF can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Many people pursuing IVF in the US are in the
same position, shouldering the cost on their own.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
We, of course, were just running out of money. I'm
pretty sure our credit cards had plenty on them, and
so we had to kind of walk away for a
little while. And then my hospital got new benefits kind Body,
meaning I thought I finally won the jackpot.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Kind Body is a fertility service that some employers offer
as part of their health care benefits, allowing access to
a variety of fertility care providers. Full disclosure. I also
use kind Body for fertility treatments. In Mary's case, only
one clinic in Nashville accepted kind Body, the Center for
(15:10):
Reproductive Health, As.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Soon as the benefits hit of January twenty twenty three,
I was in their office.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Mary's first IVF cycle and egg retrieval resulted in ten eggs.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
But only four for life that turned into embryos. And
then after we sent those four off to testing, we
only got one viable embryo that really sucked.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
The results were disappointing, but also fairly typical. There's this
stereotype that fertility doctors or mad scientists trying to get
a monstrous number of eggs just because when in fact,
in most cases, you need to start with a large
number of eggs in order to end up with enough
(15:57):
embryos for one or two live births. When I started IVF,
I was told to expect that about half of the
eggs retrieved could be lost at each step of the process,
during fertilization, during the weight to see if they grew
into embryos, and after genetic testing. So if you start
(16:19):
with twenty mature eggs, you might end up with four
or five viable embryos, and that might only end in one,
maybe two pregnancies, and that's if you're really lucky. Still,
no matter how much Mary might have prepared for this reality,
seeing her numbers diminish from ten to one felt like
(16:41):
a gut punch.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I was super devastated, but.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
She still had one healthy embryo, and in June twenty
twenty three, doctor Hime Vasquez performed the transfer.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
I remember crying really hard after they said they were
all done, because I think the moment of leading up
had finally hit me that like, Okay, this is you
or die, Like this this is it. Your one embryo
is in and in ten days, you're going to find
out if you're going to be a mom or not.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Eager to see if it worked. Mary took a home
pregnancy test and it was positive.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
And I was seen the line get darker, so I
was like, oh my gosh, this is it. And then
the day before I was supposed to go in to
do blood work, the line was lighter and I dark
to panic. And then the next morning it was even
(17:41):
lighter again. Like I just remember, I couldn't.
Speaker 6 (17:46):
Even hardly work. I was so distracted.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And then I went in for my blood work and
it showed HPV of like twenty, which is not good.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Mary was having a chemical pregnancy, which is a very
miscarriage that occurs shortly after the embryo implants. Chemical pregnancies
may account for fifty to seventy five percent of all miscarriages,
though many people don't even know they're pregnant, as it
happens so early on in the process.
Speaker 10 (18:15):
You just not okay.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Act that for a while. I went to counseling. I
joined the support group that I found for women that
had been the IDF. I mean, I just had to
build up my hope again because we would have to
go through another round of IVF to try and have
a baby, and so we were back at square one.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Mary went through another egg retrieval, but it was even
less successful than her first. This time she only got
a single egg and it didn't fertilize. That's when doctor
Vaskez suggested she consider a new path using donor eggs,
and he had a way to make that happen. Outside
of his medical practice, Vazquez ran a separate business called
(19:00):
the American Embryo Adoption Agency or AEAA. Through AEAA, patients
who are struggling to conceive with their own eggs could
purchase donated eggs or embryos, often the leftovers from other
couples IVF cycles.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
I had to finally give up on that they would
be a fifty percent me running around in this world,
and that I wanted I wanted to be a mom
more than I wanted to just have a genetically binded child.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Using a Christmas bonus, Mary and her husband purchased ten
donor eggs for ten thousand dollars. They were fertilized with
her husband's sperm at the Center for Reproductive Health. Of
the ten, two developed into genetically normal embryos. Mary is
about to transfer one of these embryos when the clinic
(19:55):
shuts down. Now her embryos are locked inside. On Friday,
April twelfth, exactly one week from her last appointment, Mary
sees a Facebook post from another patient with an urgent
announcement Doctor Vaskaz is in the office right now for
(20:15):
patients who are desperately trying to get a hold of
someone at the clinic. This feels at least promising. Maybe
doctor Vaskeez can help. Mary jumps into action.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
At that point, everyone is just like, oh my god,
we have to get down there. Like people started showing
up at this point because we want answers, we want
to know what's going on, pretty much anyone that didn't
have to be like at a cropt in jodge of
down there. We were thinking he would recognize as and
he would want to as a decent physician, Like he
would be like, hey, this is just like a misunderstanding,
(20:46):
or like he would talk to you, you would think.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
As Mary steps off the elevator onto the fourth floor,
her heart is pounding. She sees seven other women and
already gathered in the hallway outside the clinic through the
glass doors. The waiting room looks the same, just empty,
and today the doors are locked. They don't see doctor Vaskez,
(21:13):
so it's unclear if he's even still there, But on
the off chance that he is, they wait. The patients
want to talk to him if he won't answer their questions.
At the very least, they're hoping they can get copies
of their medical records. Documentation that shows their fertility history,
improves their legal claim to what remains inside their embryos,
(21:38):
eggs and sperm, what the industry refers to more vaguely
as genetic material. Without these records, they can't just move
to another clinic for care. They can't transport their embryos,
they can't even begin to try to get pregnant.
Speaker 6 (21:56):
We're just all trying to figure out, like how do
we get him to come out, Like how do we
get him to know so that we don't mean any harm.
We just want our medical records.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
As they're waiting, the elevator doors open and another woman emerges,
heading towards the clinic. She walks up to the glass door,
shakes the handle, and the pier is confused that the
door won't open.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
She thinks she's coming by just to pick up a script.
She has no idea that the clinic clothes. I'm like, hey,
you know what's going on, and she's like, no, i
just got back into town from vacation. I'm just to
start my IVS this week. And I was like, I
think you should watch this news report that came out.
It's going to be a lot of information, and we're
(22:39):
all kind of in limbo, like we all don't know
what's really going on. And she starts crying and she's like,
I just gave this man thirty thousand dollars in cash
two weeks ago to start this IBS. It shouldn't have
been left on the patients to tell other patients about
the horrific event. Yeah, I felt like I had just
(22:59):
like crushed a woman's soul.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
An hour or two goes by, no one comes to
the door, and then a couple of nurses get off
the elevator. They're not employees of the Center for Reproductive Health. Instead,
judging by their lab coats, they work for Ovation, an
independent embryology lab that partners with another nearby fertility clinic.
(23:24):
It seems that they came to CRH just.
Speaker 6 (23:26):
To help out, and we're like, what are you guys
doing here, Like are you checking on the embryos, And
they're like, yeah, we are just here to check on
the embryos to make sure the tanks have nitrogen.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
The women start begging the nurses to help, to check
if doctor Vazquez is inside and if so, tell him
to please come out.
Speaker 6 (23:45):
It was such a horrific thing to see. Women were
all crying because if this is closing, nobody doctors were
gonna they're gonna repeat yests. They're gonna not know what's
gone on, Like we need our medical records. They felt
so bad for us, they were fugging us. They apologize.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
The Ovation nurses tell the women to write down their
names and they will search for their medical records while
they're inside. They make their way through the clinic doors
and disappear into the back.
Speaker 6 (24:13):
An hour goes by and the women come out and
they're like, you guys were trying, but everything is so unorganized.
We can't find a lot of your guys' stuff. Half
of it's in a paper form, half of it's on digital,
half of it's not uploaded. I just remember all this
shaking and scared.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
The Ovation nurses are able to pass along some medical records,
but not Mary's.
Speaker 6 (24:40):
She just kept saying, I just can't find the proof
of the embryos information for you. Like I was terrified.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
I was, Oh my god, it.
Speaker 6 (24:48):
Was the out of all of our journey. That was
the worst moment ever. I was scared there was a
proof that I owned my embryos, that they were mine.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Salvation nurses can't stay for long. They have to get
back to work. But on their way out, they mentioned
that doctor Vasquez is actually there in the office. He
doesn't emerge from the back, but Mary isn't ready to
give up, not.
Speaker 6 (25:14):
Yet, and I was like, I'm not leaving. Then all
of a sudden, we hear the elevator open up again
and we hear this woman in Highfields and she walks
right into the clinic like she owns the place, like
a woman in a suit. One of the girls I
was there with, Megan, literally yells across the lobby and
she goes, hey, who are you, And she goes, I'm
(25:34):
his attorney. Her name was Dixie, and she looks like it,
let me tell you. And that's when Megan's like, please,
you have to help us, Like Mary needs her medical records,
she needs proof of that she has embryos in there.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Dixie is empathetic to her plight. She lets Mary inside
the clinic and tells her to take a seat in
the lobby. Dixie heads off to search for Mary's records, warning,
take a while, she.
Speaker 6 (26:01):
Would be nice.
Speaker 7 (26:02):
She was.
Speaker 6 (26:02):
Actually, she was trying to defend him to me. She
was like, you know, his staff walcked out. We want
to help the patients, and like at that point I
was like, I don't care. I was like, to please
find my medical record.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Mary sits alone in the empty waiting room. It's strange.
There's no receptionist tapping on her keyboard, no other patients
chatting in hushed tones, no movement at all. The normal
rhythm of the clinic, which is so familiar to her,
is absent. The quiet makes her uncomfortable. More time passes,
(26:43):
Dixie finds some paperwork, but it's not what Mary needs.
Then Dixie calls an it person on the phone to help,
and finally Mary gets an email with a thousand pages
of documents attached. She quickly forwards it to her husband.
Speaker 6 (26:59):
Then I'm like, I need I start looking to this
email right now before I leave. I need you to
find in a thousand pages proof that the embryos are
genetically like half you, we own them, and that they
are store here at this lab. I just needed that
proof before I walked up, because I know, thank God,
I knew that would be the last time I would
ever be in that lobby.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Soon, Mary's husband texts her that he's found the needed documents.
Just as a couple of new women show up at
the glass door and rattle the handle.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
I'm thinking, oh my god, it's going to be more patient.
They're going to see me in here. I'm going to
get their hopeful. They start pounding on the glass door
and they look at me and they point at the knob,
and that's when the attorney showed back up. So the
attorney Lesson opens the door and is like, we're not
open right now. We will contact. They're like, no, we
are here from the state of Tennessee. And then the
(27:51):
attorney literally she looked at me and she said, do
you have everything? And I said, yes, I do, and
that was it. I walked out of there.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
As Mary leaves the Center for Reproductive Health, the new
women enter the clinic. They aren't patients though they're inspectors
from the Tennessee Health Facilities Commission. Their job is to
investigate complaints about healthcare providers. They received reports that patients
have been unable to contact anyone at the clinic, and
(28:24):
they're there for an unannounced inspection Dixie, Doctor Vasquez's lawyer
brings them back into the office. An affidavit by one
of the inspectors, Deborah Verna, lays out exactly what they saw.
The Tennessee Health Facilities Commission declined to make her available
for an interview, but here are parts of her affidavit
(28:46):
and the resulting report read by a voice actor.
Speaker 11 (28:50):
I observed that there were no staff members present besides
doctor him Vaskez. Doctor Vasquez told us that the clinic
was not closed posed, it was just experiencing low volume.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Doctor Vazquez gives the inspectors a tour of the facility.
They are very eager to check on the cryogenic tanks,
as a number of patients had expressed worry that their
embryos might not be receiving adequate care.
Speaker 11 (29:18):
We asked doctor Vasquez how many embryos were currently being stored.
At first, he said he didn't know. He later stated
there were between eight hundred to one thousand embryos.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Court documents later show there were one thousand, one hundred
and eighty eight frozen embryos at the clinic, several hundred
more than his estimate. Doctor Vazquez leads them to the
cryo tank storage room. Just outside the door, the inspectors
spot a tank without an alarm system. It's labeled both
backup storage and mice embryos. As they prepare to enter
(29:54):
the room, the inspectors ask if they should put on
personal protective equipment. Doctor Vazquez tells them it's not necessary. Then,
in front of them, he begins opening the tanks.
Speaker 11 (30:07):
I observed doctor Vasquez opening embryo and sperm cryogenic storage
tanks without using personal protective equipment, which is a violation
of infection control protocols. When I raised the issue with
doctor Vasquez, he stated he did not need to use PPE.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
The inspectors watch as doctor Vasquez removes the plug from
a cryogenic tank and places it on a stainless steel
rolling cart. The cart is visibly soiled, covered in an
unknown sticky substance, use tweezers, broken class laboratory straws, and
a wadded up paper towel. The investigators also take a
(30:46):
closer look at the tanks themselves. They had been tipped
off by the clinic's former embryologist that one of the
tanks might be leaking, they wanted to see for themselves.
Speaker 11 (30:59):
I did not observe a puncture, but I was unable
to fully determine if the tank had developed a leak
because there were no documented temperature readings of any of
the storage tanks since April fifth.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
As the inspector wrote in her report, any facility with
cryogenic storage tanks is federally mandated to monitor and document
their temperatures regularly, but there was no temperature documentation since Friday,
April fifth, a full week before. When Verna asked doctor
Vasquez about the missing paperwork, he has no explanation. Inspectors
(31:39):
asked doctor Vasquez to demonstrate the procedures for servicing the tanks,
but when he goes to measure the liquid nitrogen, the
inspectors say he's off by seven centimeters. Verner questions Vasquez
about it, but he doubles down and insists he's right.
Speaker 11 (31:55):
Doctor Vazkez appeared to be unable to accurately measure the
liquid nitrogen and record the measurements.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
They asked doctor Vazkez for a copy of the facility's
written policies, but he can't find them. Verna finds something, though,
when she checks out a binder laying on the countertop
in the lab. It's filled with old documents dated two
thousand and one. The Health Department later notes in its
report that crh's policies and procedures had not been updated
(32:28):
to reflect current professionally recognized standards of practice for over
two decades. The inspectors conclude their visit and leave the
Center for Reproductive Health, but the investigation is not over.
They call an embryologist who had recently worked at the clinic,
now living in Florida. She tells them that she's owed
(32:51):
more than fifty thousand dollars for past services and shares
her concerns about the embryos. The embryologists declined to speak
on the record with me, so here's what she told investigators.
According to their report, again read by a voice actor.
Speaker 10 (33:08):
His behavior is like a caged animal and he's dissociated
from reality. He'll be talking with each hip or like
everything is great and it's not.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
The clinic's former embryologist begs someone to intervene.
Speaker 10 (33:21):
He's not set up for an emergency. Someone needs to
take care of it. If something goes wrong with one
of the tanks, he doesn't know what to do, and
he has no one now that can do this. All
of his staff is gone.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
I asked doctor Vazquez's lawyer, Dixie Cooper, about the claims
that he was unable to tend to the cryogenic tanks properly.
She said the inspectors were incorrect and that he was
in the clinic every day checking them regardless. On April
twenty six, exactly three weeks after the clinic's final day
(33:56):
in operation, someone else does step in to take over,
I said, breaking news to.
Speaker 6 (34:01):
Tell you about.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Tennessee's attorney general is suing a Nashville doctor. Doctor Vazquez
and the businesses tied to his fertility clinic are sued
by the Tennessee Attorney General. It's not a criminal case
or even a medical malpractice suit. Instead, Vazqaz is accused
of violating the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act, which prohibits false
(34:23):
advertising and misrepresentation about goods and services. The gist of
the lawsuit is this, the patients considered consumers paid for
services and a certain level of care they didn't get.
The clinic's promotional material boasted that patients would receive consistent, personalized,
(34:43):
high quality care, and if they ultimately decided to switch
to another fertility clinic, the Center for Reproductive Health would
facilitate the transfer of care to ensure an easy and
seamless transition. Obviously, when the clinics shut down, that's not
what many patients experienced. The state estimated that doctor Vazquez's
(35:05):
patients had paid him tens of thousands of dollars for
services that they had not received.
Speaker 8 (35:11):
The way that they do it is you pay for
your transfer before the cycle, before they even start you
on the medicine line. You have to pay for your transfer.
We had already paid for the transfer. We already pay
for all of the stuff that goes with it.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
The Attorney General's office also obtains a temporary restraining order,
freezing Vazquez's assets and effectively removing him from control. The
court quickly appoints a third party, called a receiver, to
manage the closure and oversee the clinic storage tanks until
they can be moved elsewhere. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Scrimmatti
(35:47):
gives an interview with news Channel five to address the
immediate concerns of the patients, namely if their genetic material
stored at the clinic is okay.
Speaker 12 (35:59):
The tanks are top off to the best of my knowledge,
They've been kept to an adequate level throughout the transition,
but that's only because a lot of people worked very
hard to make sure that they were as this thing collapsed.
That was a priority for everybody. They wanted to be
sure that there was not some failure of the cooling system.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
For patients, it feels like a turning point. With Vasquez
out and someone new in charge, surely things will start moving.
They just need their medical records. They just need to
get access to their embryos. It seems like it should
be straightforward, but anyone who's dealt with the government knows
everything moves at a sluggish pace. For these patients who
(36:46):
are raising the clock to get pregnant, any delay could
mean the difference between having a child or not.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
For us, we just can't get started without our embryos,
so we're literally just stuck. It feels like I just
keep getting older and my embryos keep sitting at.
Speaker 8 (37:03):
A tage.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Next time on what Happened in Nashville. On the Facebook group,
the women are talking to each other, sharing their experiences
at the clinic, and as they compare notes and research,
they discover what appears to be another bombshell about someone
else working at doctor Vasquez's clinic.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
There's no mention of him with the board, there's no
mention of him with a license in the state of Tennessee.
Speaker 8 (37:40):
There's nothing.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
The Metro Nashville Police Department and the Department of Health
launch investigations.
Speaker 7 (37:47):
I don't want anybody touching me. I don't want my
own husband touching me like. You just feel disgusting, you
feel violated, you feel manipulated, like all of the emotions.
You know at that point you're deceived.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
What Happened in Nashville is a production of School of
Humans and iHeart Podcasts, written, reported, and hosted by me
Melissa Jelson. Our producer is Etily's Perez. Our senior producer
is Amelia Brock, with additional production by Emily Seiner and
Carl Catle. Theme song by Jesse Nice Swanger, Sound design,
(38:23):
scoring and mixing by Jeremy Thal and Jesse Nye Swanger.
Fact checking by Savannah hug Lee and Austin Thompson. Our
production manager is Daisy Church. Executive producers are Jason English,
Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you're enjoying
the show, tell everyone you know and don't forget to
(38:43):
leave a rating in your favorite podcast app. Tune in
again next week for what happened in Nashville
Host
Melissa Jeltsen
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