Shipping

My husband works unpredictable schedules.  We never really know when he will be able to have time off, and even when he thinks he does it can change last minute.  This keeps life exciting and us on our toes. So for him to be able to say he needs to be in India at a certain date - not going to happen. The solution for us is to ship his errr….,  ummm… let’s say his  “sample”.

Things were going very smooth until time to ship. At that point, our local clinic became concerned with liability issues and refused to let us sign a release form. From what I understand, this is a very unusual reaction. The local clinic’s suggestion: they would hand over our samples to us personally, but not to the very professional cryo- shipping company with the very high-tech vapor carrier. WHAT???

“No! Please, please, please work with me” I pled as I burst into tears with the embryologist here in the States.  Fast-forwarding through a very long and emotional day, the clinic finally agreed to release the samples if we stayed  with the samples from the time they were put into the vapor tank until the shipper picked them up. We could then assume all liability for them.  If you are going this route, the shipper (Core Cryolab) has been fabulous in helping us to circumvent these issues so that in the end we didn’t even have to wait with the vapor carrier. Core Cryolab is incredible! 

Once our samples left our local clinic, it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. Everything else went smoothly.  I know I should cut the local clinic a little slack since they really are the newbies involved in the process of international shipping. Core Cryolab and SCI have done this multiple times. So let me tell you it was a great relief when the shipment was solely in Core Cryolab’s hands. Today we got our confirmation that the shipper arrived safe and sound at  SCI!

Lessoned learned:  Before providing any samples for shipping to India, get the release protocols from your local clinic in writing.