So I recently got surgery two weeks ago and on the day of the surgery, they had me waiting in a cold room in just a gown because they had to do a pregnancy test. I had just gotten off my period literally two days ago and unless I was miraculously the next Virgin Mary, I’m 100% not pregnant. The nurse barely looks up from her charts to acknowledges this before insisting that I had to take another test. If I didn’t take another one, they would immediately cancel my surgery. It was hospital policy.
I’ve had this condition all my life but its gotten completely unbearable the past few years and I’ve been actively going to the doctors the last two years trying different methods to allievate my pain and this surgery was my last chance at any type of pain free life. It took 6 months to schedule and if I had to wait another second, I was going kill somebody. Safe to say I was a little pissed. I sat in that freezing room, irritated with an IV needle sticking in my hand, waiting on the nurse to find records of my pee test that I did less than a two week ago at their request. She couldn’t find the test results. She handed me an empty container with a cheery smile and an obnoxious prep talk that I did not ask for and told me to fill it.
One of the preparatory requirements they gave me was that the night before the surgery I couldn’t consume any foods or liquid (water especially). So I couldn’t pee. I asked for some water and she reluctantly gave me a cup with two sip fulls.
My surgery was scheduled for 9 A.M, they told me to come in at 7:30 A.M. It was already 11:41 A.M. when I had to retake the test and I didn’t go in until almost 1 P.M. The fact that I had to go through that extra hoop and have the threat of my surgery being cancelled hung over me like a noose just because of a pregnancy test is beyond aggravating. People love perpetually valuing the potential of a possible fetus over the lives of already living women. We always seem to come second no matter what.
That’s sounds extremely stressful. I’m sorry you had to go through that on top of everything else. We aren’t effing incubators!
This is so common amongst girls and women dealing with medical care
[Medical/Miscarriage TW] Earlier this year I went to the ER on a Monday night with terrible abdominal pain, cramps, throwing up, the whole shebang. They did an ultrasound but couldn’t see anything so they attributed it to a bad stomach bug, gave me IV fluids & anti-nausea meds, and sent me home Tuesday morning.
They didn’t want to do a CT scan, you see, because ‘We don’t want to irradiate your uterus unnecessarily.’ Here’s the thing. There was NO way I was pregnant AT ALL because I was literally still suffering & passing the remnants of a fucking spontaneous miscarriage. Not only that, I told them: the miscarriage was a surprise and an accident. I do not want children, had not been trying to have a baby, and had not known I was pregnant until it stopped (it was a weird year).
I was severely dehydrated and on morphine but I do remember telling them ‘I don’t care about my uterus, I’m not using it.’ But because of their concern for any future potential other fetuses, they didn’t do a CT scan. And 20 hours later I got to experience the worst pain of my life, my first CT scan, and my first surgery when my appendix stopped just being infected and decided to go ahead and burst.
I don’t usually add my own $0.02 to posts but misogyny in medicine needs to stop.
Yeah, this happened to me, too, about 17 years ago at University of Chicago Hospital after getting hit by a car.
I had to deal with the same shit about 23 years ago, when I was about 18… when my father rushed me to an ER because of terrible abdominal pain. When my dad walked out of the room for a bit, a nurse asked if I was pregnant. I said no, I’m a virgin. She had waited for my dad to walk away because she figured I’d lie to her if he were there. I’m still like “No, I guarantee I’m not pregnant. I really am a virgin.” They took blood to run tests, and when the results came back, a nurse happily informed me I wasn’t pregnant. By then I was furious, because all they had done was start IV fluids and take blood. I said “I already told you that. Now you are going to charge me for a pregnancy test when I didn’t need one! You had better not!” She said of course there’s a charge for every test done.” I was livid. The other tests were just basic blood panels, and the results were nothing interesting.
They gave me morphine, which made me feel horribly sick until I puked. I spent hours in that cold ER room while wearing nothing but a hospital gown, freezing, and it was late at night, so my dad kept falling asleep in his chair against the opposite wall. I thought he was dead. I cried and yelled at him until he woke up. Every damn time he fell asleep again, I thought he was dead. Turns out morphine doesn’t just make me feel nauseous until I puke, it also gives me terrifying paranoid delusions.
The staff rarely came by to check on anything. I finally got to tell a nurse how the morphine affects me… and that I’d puked hours ago, with no emesis tray to catch it, but no one had checked on me. She gave me another dose but followed it with phenergan, the injection of which stings like heck in your blood vessels. Then they sent me home, four hours after I got there, saying it’s probably just gastroenteritis.
Every damn time I go to an ER or some emergency clinic, I’m always asked if I’m pregnant, and they always give me some sideways glance when I say no… as if they expect me to come clean and change my answer. I AM NOT PREGNANT.
I hate hospitals….
ForLoveFromFear 