“I’m always in tears seeing patients who had no hope of carrying a pregnancy deliver and hold their own baby – it’s the best part of my job.”
As the Research Nurse Coordinator for Penn Medicine's Uterus Transplantation for Uterine Factor Infertility (UNTIL) trial, I know so much about the struggles many women face to become mothers. And now too, how transplantation may provide hope for motherhood, for some.
There are women out there who cannot have children because they were born with an underdeveloped uterus or who had a medical need to have a hysterectomy at a young age. Before uterus transplantation became an option, the only way for these women to have biological children was through surrogacy. Through this exciting research, we provide a new path to parenthood.
We began the program with the uterus coming from deceased donors. As if this work was not already so inspiring, we now also have a community of living donors — healthy women who have voluntarily stepped forward to donate their uterus to a woman in need. The UNTIL study, which began recruiting patients in November 2017, has really grown. We now have 3,000 applications — of those, 2,000 are candidates to receive a transplant and 1,000 are candidates to be living donors.
I'm the first person the patient talks to when they contact our program and I work with them through the entire process. There are so many steps in this process — the screening, medical evaluations, in vitro fertilization, transplant surgery, a regimen of immunosuppressant medications and close monitoring by a team of high-risk obstetricians. I make sure all the steps in the process are followed to ensure the safety of our patients and, because this is still research based, that all protocol requirements are met. Through it all, over the course of several years, I form a strong bond with patients.
It truly is a privilege to work with this team. And it is an amazing team — over 35 people who surround these patients — physicians, nurses and research investigators with expertise in transplant, obstetrics and gynecology, fertility, bioethics, social work, psychology, pharmacy, nutrition, pathology and infectious diseases.
The most amazing moment in this whole process is when these babies are born. It's so emotional for everyone. I'm always in tears seeing patients who had no hope of carrying a pregnancy deliver and hold their own baby — it's the best part of my job."