By Vanessa Etienne

Dozens of victims are suing a fertility clinic after undergoing a routine treatment without proper pain medicine due to a nurse stealing the clinic’s supply.

More than 65 women visited the Yale University Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Clinic for a routine procedure in order to retrieve their eggs. However, they dealt with unnecessary pain during and after the process.

“It’s just this stabbing internal pain that no one should ever feel. Ever,” said Angela Cortese, one of the victims.

Laura Czar, another victim, said she was dealing with "torturous" pain but was told by staff she had already been given the maximum dose of pain medication.

“They made me doubt myself because nobody was listening, nobody was acknowledging the fact that I was saying I was in pain,” she said. “I was making it very clear."

It was later learned, following a federal investigation, that a nurse at the clinic, Donna Monticone, stole hundreds of vials of fentanyl for her personal use over a five month period in 2020, replacing it with a saline solution and leaving the patients in excruciating pain. Fentanyl is the pain medication used during and after the extraction process.