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60 percent. He let me know no one could say how well the eggs would fertilize after thawing nor could he give a number about the likelihood of a thawed egg resulting in pregnancy. As for the health of children conceived after egg-freezing, well, yes, he advised that knowledge in the field was limited.
    We did not talk much about side effects. I recall discussing ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome—a potentially life-threatening condition which involved abnormal swelling and fluid retention. It apparently affected around 1 percent of IVF patients. No doubt a complete nightmare for whoever was unlucky enough to get it. But I didn’t blink when the doctor mentioned this risk; if he was cavalier then I was the Commander in Chief of Cavaliers. Freezing my eggs seemed like my only chance to take action, to do something, to break out of my force-frozen stasis, my own icy Ninth Circle of Hell. Crack ice with ice! I knew it was far from ideal but it was better than nothing.
    At the front desk I handed the receptionist the new consent form filled in by the doctor. I told her I was freezingmy eggs. “Oh.” She made a correction on the form, crossed out a couple of treatments and charges, replaced them with two others. I was uneasy with the receptionist determining my treatment and asked that the doctor confirm it.
    There is an enormous amount of paperwork involved with IVF. There are underlying consents and then consents along the way for each specific treatment. I had another look at the underlying consents. They very clearly spelled out—among other things—that there was no guarantee of success for any procedure; that assisted reproduction has complications (including ovarian hyperstimulation; pelvic infection; damage to the bladder, bowel or blood vessel at the time of egg collection); and that the doctor managing my care might have a financial interest in the clinic. With those consents I felt the same sense of empowerment, fair bargaining, ability to discuss and negotiate a document, as I did when I signed off blindly on the terms and conditions of the latest Adobe update. Take it or leave it: well, not entirely, I was asked if I would allow my unfertilized eggs to be used for laboratory training. I circled No.
    The all-up cost to freeze my eggs was around AU$11,300 (US$11,820)—none of which was covered by public health care.
    How did I fund all of this, the IVF, cycle after cycle? A screenplay I wrote under a pseudonym went into production. I spent that windfall—a privileged decision I could afford to make. Once on the phone a friend unwittingly said something hurtful. I was moaning about the high cost of IVF and she said, “I know, my sister had to sell her house to buy her kids.” Buy her kids .
    I went back to the nurses.
    I love nurses. I have a nurse fetish, I think I acquired it after my illness in my twenties. It’s not acutely sexual, unlike the nurse fetish of a male friend who managed to spark an affair with a nurse while recovering from a heart operation. (No one ever said he had to buy his life .) I love nurses because they are kind. I love submitting to their care. At the clinic the nurses played a large role in the IVF treatment. During a cycle they were the point of first and frequent contact. I say “the nurses” because they had their own division: whenI called the nurses, or the nurses called me with a result, I wasn’t always sure exactly whom I’d be speaking to—it could have been any nurse from the greater body of nurses. In this way “the nurses” were a kind of timeless ideal, swap out one nurse for another and the nurses would remain untouched in their humble glory. Because I started the process at the city clinic my early visits to the nurses for tests happened at that location, but when it came time to do the egg collection we decided it would be better if I moved to a sister clinic in a suburb closer to my home. The daily