guest post by Amaris Ketcham
In 2021, I began drawing diary comics about undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) to keep my family and friends updated on the various appointments, procedures, and milestones. I hadn’t drawn much before, but comics seemed like the perfect medium to relate the experience of IVF, which itself is like a biology lesson in wonder and disappointment. Comics provided a unique way to capture the hilarity and oddity of new experiences, such as relocating sperm across town or trying to give yourself a shot in the butt.
“Hysterical Problems” is hastily drawn in real time—and is an ongoing story that directly confronts often-taboo topics, such as vasectomy regret, wand ultrasounds, uterine troubles, and infertility in general.
Every year, more than 55,000 women in the US give birth using assistant reproductive technologies (New York Times, November 9, 2021)—and that’s just the number of success stories, not the number of attempts (closer to 876,000, according to the same article). Yet, the process can feel isolating and shameful for many women. During in vitro fertilization, a woman’s body becomes a place of experimentation and a dramatic setting for successes and failures. In “Hysterical Problems,” I draw my lived experience of a scientific process that is incredible, strange, at times equally dehumanizing and mysterious. while acknowledging my own fears and flaws–and a deep desire to have a child.
Currently, this IVF journey is still a story in progress (and I am still posting about it on the “Hysterical Problems” substack), but I am hoping to re-draw and re-letter “Hysterical Problems” to submit for publication. I hope that this work of graphic medicine will be valuable to patients, their partners, and clinicians seeking to understand the patient experience of IVF.
Links:
You can read the whole first draft, as it occurred in real time here: https://hystericalproblems.substack.com/
Personal Website: www.amarisketcham.com
Instagram: @ketcham
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