[khaledkteily]

Haha! You and me both! The worst part, to me, was it being referred to as "the specimen". I don't know why that always weirded me out.

Sperm can actually survive fine for 1-2 hours hours when kept near body temperature, so a 1-hour courier service is sufficient (and it usually takes less than 60 minutes). If there were any issues, we'd know when it arrived at the clinic.

For anyone outside of major cities, we do overnight shipping with Fedex's biohazardous materials division. We use a transport medium that keeps sperm alive for up to 48 hours during transit. You add it to the sperm, it protects it during that period, and it gets washed out (via centrifuge) when it arrives at our clinic. It's not perfect - you can expect to lose approx. 10-15% motility during that time, but is particularly useful for folks in rural areas or far from fertility clinics.

PS Always love hearing other folks' clinic stories... my favourite is hearing how clinics have their pornography stolen ALL the time and have to frequently re-stock.

[jedberg]

Thanks for the info. I guess that means I could have done it at home! Oh well.

I wrote up my story in the sibling comment since someone asked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23851310