'Having no sperm destroyed me, 'Spermageddon' is coming for us all'
The pandemic of infertility featured in the dystopian drama, The Handmaid's Tale, seems too far-fetched to ever be real. But experts have alarmingly warned that in just over 20 years time, men could indeed have a sperm count of zero, ending mankind as we know it.
Dubbed 'spermageddon', leading scholar of reproductive health, Shanna Swan, says sperm levels have more than halved in the last 50 years and current projections predict that by 2045, men will be completely infertile. One person with first-hand experience of the life-exploding situation in Shaun Greenaway, who one day walked into a white room with a TV remote sealed in a freezer bag and a selection of well-thumbed erotic magazines to learn his fate.
It was his first time doing a sperm test, and sadly, certainly not his last. A few weeks later, a GP receptionist called Shaun to deliver the news he dreaded hearing - he had azoospermia - a complete lack of functional sperm. Sat on the concrete steps outside his work, he Googled the term the woman at the surgery had struggled to pronounce and was hit by the true weight of it - he was infertile. The diagnosis changed his life forever.
Police officer Shaun and his wife Jenna were in no rush to start a family... (Shaun Greenaway)
... but when the time came, they found they couldn't conceive (Shaun Greenaway)His whole identity was shattered in an instant and his dreams of ever becoming a father gone with it, or so he thought. "Suddenly you've had this thing you've taken for granted your whole life - you see these older men, older rock stars, having kids in their senior years, you just assume infertility is more a female issue… suddenly you have this thing taken away that you never thought of being a problem," Shaun told the Mirror. "It was life-changing, I went through grief essentially."
Shaun, 40, a police officer, married his wife Jenna in 2013. They often received comments from friends and loved ones about starting a family, but they were in no rush.
Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade
Considering themselves fit and healthy, they knew they wanted children at some point, with Shaun even imagining having his own five-a-side football team. About four years after they tied the knot, when Shaun was 34 and Jenna 32, the couple - who met in the force and lived in Hertfordshire - decided to start trying for a baby.
Believing it would happen right away, they jetsetted off on one last child-free romantic holiday. But each month, Jenna's period arrived.
By the end of 2017, they started to suspect there might be a problem. Shaun recalled two instances - when he was 22 he had mumps which saw his testicles swell to an abnormal size and in 2011, he had been to his GP about a varicocele - enlarged veins which cause the testicles overheat and in turn, damage sperm.
On both occasions, the issue of his fertility was never raised by medical professionals. But when Jenna and Shaun went to their GP about their failure to conceive, it was taken seriously, with them both sent for tests. It was here that Shaun carried out his first sperm test, which he recalls as the 'most horrifying out-of-body experience'. But it was being told of his azoospermia that was life-altering.
"Infertility is grief, it's the death of my ability to pass on my own genetics," he said. "You picture what your life would look like, suddenly I lost that, so I was going through the stages of grief, like blame, denial, depression, anger. I remember, clearly, times when I was just angry all the time.
Shaun, recently pictured with his son, says dealing with his diagnosis was like dealing with grief (Shaun Greenaway)
Shaun bottled up his infertility as friends and family assumed it was Jenna experiencing problems"But I was going to work and trying to put on a brave face, not engaging in things I'd normally do, withdrawing from situations if children were there. When I was going to the pub with colleagues or mates, I was always getting that question of 'When are you trying?' People would make comments like 'Do you want me to step in for you?' It was so crass.
"If I didn't know I'd probably laugh it off but when you know it attacks your being, you know you can't do that. I realised how much of my identity was tied up in my ability to have my own biological children, that's what society tells us we should do. What does it make me as a man if I can't procreate?"
Shaun looked for support online, but he says there was none. He couldn't find one single support group for men, so he assumed he was the only one going through it, which deepened his shame.
He was pushed into a darker hole and was no longer speaking to his wife. He even suggested she find someone else who could make her happy. "I felt I was letting her down as a life partner," he added. "She didn't leave and said 'I'm with you for you, I love you for who you are.' It made me realise, genetic children or not, what I had to give as a father.
"The final part of grief is acceptance and this takes longer if you can't find a safe space to vent and have mutual empathy." He kept his infertility secret, with their mums being the only people to know.
Greggs, Costa & Pret coffees have 'huge differences in caffeine', says report
As sperm regenerates every 90 days, Shaun returned for a second test, only to find his sperm count remained at null. They spent the rest of 2018 battling to receive IVF on the NHS as they couldn't afford to go private.
"We were swept along in a tide in this world of fertility and clinics and being dragged along and it's all new words, scientific words that I've never experienced, it's not talked about in sex education at school, and just trying to keep your head above the water," he said on the turbulent year.
Shaun after one of the ops on his testicles (Shaun Greenaway)
Opening up to others became a huge part of his acceptance as he let go of his shame (Shaun Greenaway)In the December, it was confirmed they could have two rounds of IVF on the NHS. In the meantime, there were two operations available to Shaun, but still a dark secret, he knew he had to come clean to his superiors at work but was frightened he would become the butt of a joke in his banterous office.
In March 2019, he had a variceal embolisation - which saw doctors untwist the enlargened veins in his testicles. At this point, he had been hiding appointments from work, managing to swap shifts, but with a four-day recovery period, he knew he had to tell his colleagues.
By then, he had come to terms with his diagnosis after reading a book called The Little Big Things, by Henry Fraser, who became a mouth artist after being paralysed from the shoulders down after an accident at 17. He discovered that jotting his thoughts down became a release.
"Writing notes on my phone, getting it out of my head, was crucial to me starting to move forward," Shaun explained. "Staying in your own head is not a healthy place to be when you have a washing machine of emotion, and pain, and my ego had taken a kicking on what it means to be a man. But there is so much more to it."
More comfortable putting his thoughts pen to paper, he wrote his boss an email explaining what he had been going through and why he would need the time off, and their response was 'phenomenal'. Yet three months after the operation at University College Hospital London, he went for another sperm test, but this was the hardest by far.
He buckled under the pressure with so much on the line, and had to return a week later. The couple had so much hope pinned on the success of the op, but it had no effect. "That zero was the worst time of my life," Shaun recalled.
"We happened to pull over in the car when the doctor called, to say it was still zero, and the moment I heard it a mum walked past with her pram. We were at rock bottom, my wife was crying, I was in shock, and thoughts came back up again that I'm making her cry and that I'm at fault for this."
The couple took some time to recuperate and decided to give the second operation a go, a major operation called microscopic testicular sperm extraction (microTESE), a procedure that takes sperm directly from the testicular tissue of a man's reproductive system. At this point, Shaun had come around to the notion of not having a biological connection to his children, however Jenna didn't want him to have any regrets or what-ifs.
Shaun and Jenna underwent IVF on the NHS and used a sperm donor (Shaun Greenaway)
The couple wanted to know little information about the sperm donor, so they had no preconceived ideas about their future children (Shaun Greenaway)But immediately after going under the knife, they found there was no sperm. In his days recovering, Shaun, who felt destined to be a dad, felt ready to look at alternative options, and the couple decided to go down the sperm donor route.
He opened up to friends about his journey, after they initially assumed it was Jenna that was experiencing problems with her fertility, and was met with nothing but support. He even discovered an officer who sat just a few desks away from him and had been through a similar testing experience. "I started opening up, which really helped me," he recalled.
"I said the reason is because of me, I don't have sperm. I said that as stats show it is 1 in 6 [that our impacted by infertility], I've taken one for the team. I was worried about if they'd understand, they were just phenomenal. It validated why we're friends."
They took their NHS funding to an IVF clinic in Cambridge, which had a sperm bank attached to it, and looked at potential candidates based on a similar hair and eye colour to Shaun, and athletic build. They were also informed about their medical history and education level.
Some profiles had written descriptions with information about themselves, their character traits, and why they were donating sperm, largely to give back after their wives had received egg donations. But Shaun and Jenna in the end decided to go with the blank profiles, not wanting to know anything about their personality, so as not to have any preconceived notions about how their children might turn out.
"We wanted to not have any expectations and allow them to flourish as our children," Shaun added. After Shaun's failed operations, it was now time for Jenna to take responsibility with gruelling IVF injections.
In Decemeber 2019, she had eggs retrieved to create embryos that were then frozen but the couple were met with another setback. Jenna had developed ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome - an exaggerated response to excess hormones - which can be fatal.
Cruelly, her stomach swelled to look like she was six months pregnant. "Mentally that was so tough," Shaun said. "We thought we were finally there. My wife withdrew from everyone." She eventually got better by February 2020 but then lockdown hit, putting their plans on hold as the clinics shut down.
But Shaun credits the lockdown as a blessing, as they had more time to spend together and became extremely close again, having chance to reconnect over walks in the park and coffee dates. By the end of June, the embryos were transferred and like all couples going through IVF, had the dreaded two-week wait to see if they were pregnant. It was torture for them to hold off, but they did, and on July 5, 2020, they took the test which showed positive.
"I was crying, everything changed that day," Shaun said. "We told our friends, it was just amazing." The clinic then not only confirmed their pregnancy, but confirmed they were expecting twins. Due to lockdown rules, Shaun couldn't be there with his wife for the scan, so she made a recording.
"I knew when she walked out, she was beaming ear to ear," Shaun remembered. "I watched the video later, we had two little jellybeans. Seeing their hearts beating... it was an incredible moment."
The twins - Ray and Evelyn - were born in February 2021 and are now two and a half years old. "Doubts crept in about the connection during the pregnancy with my mind playing tricks on me," the dad-of-two admitted. "But the day they were born - the love is so pure.
"The best part of being a dad is coming back home and seeing their faces." On fatherhood, he added: "It's absolute carnage. It's the best carnage. I'm infatuated and I can't bear to be away from them."
Shaun says there is nothing quite like being a dad to Ray and Evelyn (Shaun Greenaway)Shortly before the twins arrived, Shaun, who now lives in Cornwall with his young family, set up an Instagram page - Knackered Knackers - to raise awareness of male infertility and to get men talking about it. His followers are 80 per cent female, as he receives messages from wives and partners asking for support, but the now male fertility coach is slowly seeing more men following the page.
Asked about 'spermageddon', Sean agrees that we are 'sleepwalking into a crisis'.
"All the predictions do lean towards male fertility is declining - modern lifestyle, diets, microplastics in our diet, smoking, alcohol," Shaun commented. "We live in this comfortable life where you're grabbing food off shelves, it's not good for our hormones which impacts fertility.
"We live this life of football, sports, beer, trying to be what society tells us to be. Then when you have something like infertility, the whole core of you gets stripped away. The conversation around mental health is picking up, but that's one aspect.
"It's about getting knowledge to younger people - they will be the ones trying in 2045. In sex education, they need to be taught actually, it's very hard to conceive and there are many routes to parenthood. The World Health Organisation says 1 in 6 people will face fertility issues and that is completely indiscriminate of age, sex, race."
For those struggling, Shaun's advice is to speak up. The moment he opened up to his wife, a weight was lifted and as soon as he let his friends know that it wasn't his wife but actually him with the issue, it enabled him to "get out of his own head". Just like with sex education in schools, he feels it shouldn't be a taboo topic in the workplace.
He commends organisations like Fertility Matters At Work, which is on a mission to educate and inspire businesses with an awareness of how fertility issues affect both employees and organisations. "Work is a big part of our lives," Shaun insisted. "Shrouding appointments, having new babies in the office is triggering, it's extreme trauma and infertility is so common and impactful.
"Organisations need to know how important it is and create safe spaces for people at work, and for managers to safeguard their staff. We all have the right to raise a family and having policies in place that will protect the worker, without question and judgment, are vital at reducing stress as much as possible. He added: "I felt alone for two years which compounded my shame. Finding a community is crucial - there is so much strength in knowing you're not alone."
If you're concerned about your fertility, head to the NHS webpage here https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/infertility/.
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
