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Monday, December 18, 2006
Silly Doctor Tricks
How many kids are enough? And who gets to decide?
Apparently this pompous ass, at least by his own lights. A patient with two kids and a third on the way wants her tubes tied. She's in her early twenties and just can't afford more kids, and has her hands full already. But her doctor thinks tubal ligation is a terrible idea because studies show she's at risk for . . . what? A heart attack? Cancer? A stroke? No! The far more insidious disease of regret. Holy Christ on a hamroll! Anything but regret! So, this doc apparently believes his job isn't just to make you well, but to keep you from ever feeling sorry about anything (Strangely, he appears to assume that you couldn't regret not being able to feed your kids because they are multiplying at an exponential rate). So this guy tries to dissuade her from tubal ligation, and with some pretty outrageous arguments. Like, "what if all your children died in a fire?" Um, thanks for that horrible thought, jerkwad. And yes, of course, since children are fungible goods, the natural reaction to the deaths of my three kids would be to just replace them with more. WTF? All you med students on this blog, can you confirm that this guy is being totally uncool, and his superiors ought to slap him around a bit? I get that the patient is young, but the possession of two X chromosomes doesn't mean that your sole source of pleasure is in bearing as many larval humans as possible. I think most people would find three to be a damn reasonable cutoff. Given that she's managed three before the age of 25, leading me to believe that regular old-fashioned birth control methods aren't cutting it for her, I also find her desire for a permanent method of avoiding future surprises completely understandable. Finally, how did this guy get to be a doctor? Given his morbid fear of regret, I would think he might be better suited to a less stressful form of employment, like making Gods-eyes at a summer camp or professional whistling. Silly doctor man. |
7 Comments:
It's hard to describe exactly what the problem is here. The outcome is sexist, and inappropriate, but I just know it's the usual med-student hyper-paranoia about making a mistake at work here. It's more obsessive compulsive than exclusively patriarchal.
That being said, he's a total and complete tool. He'll learn his lesson.
12:17 AM, December 19, 2006
I think he's being more patronizing than anything. She's young, so if something happens to her kids (a million 'god forbids') she could be able to have more. Unless she gets her tubes tied. What is absurd is his need to write about it in a newspaper. His patient does not want the whole world to be able to weigh in. I think it was unethical of the doctor to write about this.
9:30 AM, December 19, 2006
my mom got her tubes tied when she was 28, after her 2nd child. but she's an upper-class white suburban woman. are there race/class implications here?
actually what i want to know is why the doctors at my university won't let me get an IUD. they also go with the "regret" explanation. is my entire purpose in life to procreate? is there a health reason? since i'll be in school at least another 3 years, shouldn't i *not* be having kids during that time? shouldn't they want to deter me from getting pregnant? grrr.
2:10 AM, December 20, 2006
IUDs do come with a higher complication rate (3/1000 insertions lead to a punctured uterus) than using the pill, they're reversible but about 20% of women who have used them have difficulty subsequently conceiving.
10:01 AM, December 20, 2006
"Difficulty," what's that? If you're over 30 you'll have "difficulty" conceiving anyway. Do you have stats on this?
My doctor was like, "maybe you'll meet someone and want to have children" - as if the damn thing couldn't be removed. Plus, once you get this parthenogenesis thing figured out, my wife can have the kids.
1:00 PM, December 20, 2006
I think it's something like 20% of women who have the IUD removed have difficulty conceiving within a year.
It's not that bad, but it's enough that the docs are cautious. There's also a higher rate of spontaneous extrusion in women who have never been pregnant because their uterus is smaller, which increases the possibility of contraceptive failure.
1:31 PM, December 20, 2006
You see, the problem is that this doctor has not been locked in a room full of mothers. I don't mean 20-something mothers. I mean those of us who are well past the age of 40 and have stopped taking his brand of crap from anyone. About anything. Don't even try it. A few hours with a bunch of us, and we'd have him wishing his mother had had one less child!
Nance
7:57 PM, December 20, 2006
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