I've done ivf and have friends who have. In many of the online infertility communities you can find people offering leftover meds free or at a steep discount. Many consider it a community service to those still in the trenches. If she was involved in those communities she could easily have obtained thousands of dollars of prescribed meds for free
I also know of a site that sells various human hormones, including the ones you would need for fertility and even those for transitioning mtf/ftm (not suggesting
at all that's what MF is doing, that's just the broadness of the hormones they sell). It's not even a deep web site, it's a surface site -- they sell various meds from other countries, stuff you could normally get on prescription, such as the hormones, things for ADHD/shift-work, depression/anxiety, etc. etc. It's not even expensive, IMO (though how it lines up against prices for health care in the States, I don't know. Could just be more expensive but easier to use if you're waiting for a decision or have been told you don't have something/can't do something but insist upon doing it).
It's really not too hard to find and, because it's not an opiate or a z-drug (they don't sell those sort of meds), laws differ from country to country about their import and their legality to have. They come without names on, they're not prescribed from anyone, they appear just to be sold from countries that have more lax laws on prescription medications. How effective the hormones are, I have no idea, but it's one way to self-medicate that could be totally and utterly legal, and, like I said, relatively easy to find. They even sell vials of local anaesthetic -- again, nothing to do with this case, but just an example of how much this particular site does.
ETA: This particular site is one I've accessed from the UK, but it does also have the price/delivery options for the States.
