[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.
