14 hours ago
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After six years of trying for a baby and two failed rounds of IVF, Toby Trice found himself at his “lowest ebb”, feeling “lost, lonely and alienated from society”.
“We were in this dark phase of not knowing where we were at. All our friends and family around us had children and we were constantly reminded we couldn’t. It was soul-destroying.
“After the second round of IVF – and hope was ripped away from us – I had suicidal thoughts. I didn’t want to be around any more,” he said.
If a GP had tested Trice for the varicocele he was eventually diagnosed with, he might never have gone through such a painful process.
A varicocele is a dilated vein in the scrotum that increases testicular temperatures and damages sperm. By some estimates it is present in 40% of cases of male infertility, yet it can be treated with routine surgery.
“The basic thing was that I had some sperm, so all the focus and attention was on trying to find the problem with my wife, Katy,” he recalls. “The clinic said we just need to keep trying through IVF and eventually we would have a baby.”
Instead, it took a contact in a support group mentioning the possibility of male infertility and a visit to a private specialist clinic for Trice to get diagnosed and treated.
Trice and his wife had a pot of money saved and faced a difficult crossroads: should they spend it on another round of IVF, or take a chance on the private clinic’s advice and pursue surgery for varicocele?
“We were sat together one evening joking after the surgery – ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely to cancel our three-month check-up if we’ve fallen pregnant?’ – and I remember Katy laughing. Two weeks later, we tested positive for a natural pregnancy and that became our son, Oliver, so it was a whirlwind of a journey,” he said.
Leading experts have spoken to the Guardian about what they say is a widespread lack of awareness of male infertility. They have argued that couples are needlessly going through IVF because male infertility is under-researched, with the NHS too often failing to diagnose treatable causes.
Martin Bowers has a similar story to Trice. It took eight years and four rounds of IVF for him and his wife to have a baby daughter, who is now 12 weeks old.
The first three failed, but it was only after Bowers attended a private clinic that he was diagnosed with and treated for fragmented DNA in his sperm that the fourth worked.
He was told to reduce his coffee intake and improve his diet, as well as taking medication to lower his oestrogen levels.
He recalls that one GP “didn’t seem to care” while another, when asked about how to improve the quality of his semen, replied: “There’s not a lot you can do.”
Bowers struggled with feeling emasculated by the couple’s fertility issues, compounded by frequent questions from family members, colleagues and friends about when he was going to start a family. “I know it’s all good humour and joking, but when you hear comments like ‘You’re the one to deliver’, you feel like you’re not man enough to give your wife a baby,” he said.
Sean Farrell got a semen test on the NHS and was told he had no sperm in his sample. He was then informed it would take over a year to see a urologist.
“At the time it felt far too long,” he recalled. The couple did not want to delay the process further since clinicians tell you that “age is really important” and their experience did not give them the confidence that they would “get the answers we needed”. He was surprised to see his local GP reading about his diagnosis of aspermia off a screen. “We’d already done a lot of research and felt we knew more than she did.”
Private testing gave him the diagnosis of rare Sertoli cell-only syndrome and they were told they would need to use donor sperm if they wanted to conceive with IVF. Farrell and his fiancee wanted to choose a sperm donor external to the NHS clinic and were told this would not be funded. They have since spent almost £25,000 on gaining the diagnosis and surgery privately, plus one failed round of IVF.
“I’m in my mid-30s now and I don’t think I’d really understood the true definition of being depressed or anxious before. I’d not experienced anything that caused me to feel low or as anxious or upset as I do now. The process is so all-consuming,” he said.
