ARE OUR DOCTORS COLD AND CALLOUS???

“Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.
Children born to a young man are like sharp arrows in a warrior’s hand.”
Psalm 127: 3 & 4

This post is written with due respect to our doctors and their profession.

Recently this has been on my mind, how can a doctor tell a woman that she will never be able to have children or that she should never get pregnant or try to have any more children.

A friend of mine was told by a doctor that she should never get pregnant. She said this was so hard to hear and she could never picture her life without children. As I sat and listened to her, something came over me, something so familiar because for many years, I was forced to picture my life without children and it was really one of the most difficult things I ever had to do. Today this friend is very pregnant, a difficult pregnancy of course but she is an ardent Christian and is totally relying on God to see her through this pregnancy. She should give birth in a couple of days.

There is someone else I know who had one child at the time and wanted another, her doctor told her she should not try to get pregnant again. Of course, she had her second child and both are doing fine up to this day and I am sure there are many other such stories out there.

I know these doctors are advising their patients against pregnancy because of medical issues that could endanger their lives and the lives of their babies, should they get pregnant, but I still think this is a cold and callous thing to do. Maybe they could find some other way of telling their patients news like this and have them involved in the process as much as possible. I am also thinking that probably, many doctors who are guilty of this are male and therefore will never be able to know what it feels like when a woman finds out she can never have children. I know this affects men too, but not in the same way as it affects women. For women, the pain is more raw and more personal. I guess it is because it is women who carry the pregnancies.

Another thing that doctors do is put timeline on people’s lives. When there is a diagnosis of a terminal illness, doctors tell their patients how much time they have left to live. As a Christian, who believes that God gives life and takes it away, this is one thing that I have a problem accepting. Senator Ted Kennedy was told he was lucky if he lived for six months after his brain tumor diagnosis and he lived fifteen months. The story was told at church on Sunday of a gentleman, a former pastor who was told he had five years to live after a surgery many years ago, and he lived twenty more years and I could go on and on with stories like these.

I cannot help but wonder if a doctor’s program of study trains them to be outright with people in such a callous way. I am all for honesty but I have a hard time dealing with honesty of this nature. I cannot imagine a doctor telling me how much time I have left to live because either I would die before the time the doctor give me from just mere fretting, or I turn the situation completely over to my Heavenly Physician. I am really hoping I would do the latter as one cannot say for sure what they would really do, until they are faced with the situation.

I was watching a television pastor once and he was telling a story that he recently went to his doctor for a check-up. His doctor took a chart and began calling out the names of some diseases and asked him if he had them in his family. Each time the pastor replied yes, the doctor ticked off a disease that he would most likely have to face in his life. The Pastor got angry, took the chart from the doctor and began going down the same list of diseases and ticking off as the doctor replied yes to them. The Pastor then said, well doc, I am just giving you an idea of how it feels to be putting timeline on people’s lives. He was simply saying, doc, you do not have that right, my Almighty God has the right to decide what diseases I get and how long a life he has afforded me here on earth. That story left an impression on me, as it happened many years ago and I am still able to relate it.

When I did my laparoscopy (surgery for PCOS) in 2002, I was so nervous and anxious. It was a minor surgery but there was nothing minor about the anxieties I was feeling. The mere fact that I had to go under anesthetic was enough to drive me crazy, that a few days after the surgery I broke out into a rash, which was later diagnosed as a type of eczema brought on by stress. I remember when I walked into the hospital lobby the morning of the surgery, a picture of a doctor with God bent over his shoulders, apparently giving him some instructions, caught my eye and that was the image I took with me into surgery. This gave me the reassurance I needed that I would have made it out of that surgery because I knew God was in charge, I trusted my doctor but I trust God more. I still use that image today whenever I find myself in situations like these. Let me say also that I was given a timeline after this surgery within which to get pregnant and when this timeline expired I was told that only invitro-fertilization could help me at this point. Well here I am today, I did not do invitro-fertilization and my husband and I are the proud parents of a vibrant and healthy two year old. Is'nt our God good.

Wow, a big mouthful indeed, but what I am really saying is that our doctors can only do for us what Almighty God entrusts them with and when they give us news that is difficult to hear, before we think it is the end, and especially if we are Christians, we should look to our Great Physician, our Head Physician and turn the situation over to him. I know in each of the cases above, these persons called on their Heavenly doctor for a second opinion and I strongly believe that, that is how they were able to rise above their conditions.

Be encouraged therefore and until next time, keep clinging to hope.

My Infertility Story - My infertility and my family cont'd.

Now for the good part, my infertility and my in-laws, and I will be focusing on my mother-in-law, as she is the one who was visibly yearning for grandchildren.
I was somewhat able to talk to my mother-in-law about my infertility, but ofcourse not the part where she would have known exactly how much pain I was in. Like my mother, my mother-in-law began making her comments about grandchildren here and there, quite harmless comments, but sadly as time passed, I did not see these comments as harmless anymore. They began to cut deep within me and this became worst as my struggle intensified. This was even harder to take because, since I spoke to her on occasions about our struggle with infertility, to the point where she even recommended some of the doctors we saw. I thought that she should have known better than anyone else and be more supportive of us.
I now began to feel very insecure around her as I often wondered if she was thinking that I was not good enough for her son because I was not able to provide her with the grandchildren she wanted so much. As a result of this, our relationship, in my opinion did not develop in a more meaningful way, as the insecurity from my infertility was interfering with this process.
The biggest blow came when one of my husband’s younger brother and his wife announced that they were expecting a child. My mother-in-law called to share the news with us, and sadly I did not take it very well because I thought she could have been a little more empathetic in how she broke the news to us, given our struggle to have children. She was understandably very ecstatic and sadly, try as I may, I could not share in the moment, as I now saw all our efforts to provide the grandchildren proving futile. We were beaten to the chase.
This soon turned ugly as I began to tell her that over all I found she was not empathetic to what we were going through, as I expected her more than anyone else to understand and that some of her comments were now beginning to hurt and she should by now be thinking of stopping and start to support us in this regard.
This did not go over very well with her and my mother and sister got involved, to the point where I was told that I was jealous of my brother-in-law and his wife, I am faithless and weak and have no use for God and that was why I was going through all this, and that I am known to cause hurt on people as I had done it before. I could have easily taken my life at that point, as I thought now that my family knew the degree of hurt that I was going through because of my infertility, albeit, not in the way I wanted it known to them, I would have received their sympathy and the understanding and support I was so yearning for.
I was happy this happened, because after the initial hurt, something new was given birth to. My family now became sympathetic, apologies were given, relationships restored and I now began receiving the love and support which I think I truly deserved from my family.
This was indeed a new day, because as the saying goes, the darkest hour is just before dawn. This was to be the dawn of my triumph over infertility and now I was able to move towards this triumph, my family with me.

In my next post, I will address how I think a family can help and support another family member experiencing infertility, from my perspective of course. You don’t want to miss this either.