"No Compassion"

 

            Sometime between 1952 and 1957, my mother had a miscarriage. At that time, women had to miss three cycles before getting pregnancy tests. I know for certain that Mom had to be at least sixteen weeks along when her hemorrhaging and severe abdominal cramping forced Dad to rush into the emergency room at MacDill Air Force Base. He told the story of blood being everywhere, doctors and nurses surrounding him as he carried Mom into the room, and thinking she was already dead.

            Mom recounted that she felt herself looking down from above as the emergency staff worked over her. “We’re losing her! We’re losing her! We’re losing her!” warned one doctor.  Mom’s thought was that she couldn’t die; she had my sister to love and care for. As the number of miscarriages in the Tampa area increased, eventually they were linked to the DDT that fogged the streets during that time period. Mom’s future pregnancies received the designation as “High Risk” and the military doctors sent her to a private OB/GYN when she was pregnant with me.             

            The severity of damage to her uterus made another miscarriage possible, but I arrived without difficulties. However, Mom continued to have problems with menstrual pain that grew progressively aggressive as the years passed. She also had difficulty getting pregnant again, and had almost given up on any more children, when she finally became pregnant with my brother in 1962.

            After my brother’s birth, Mom’s menstrual cycles grew more painful. Her interactions with doctors became a pathetic round of them minimizing her agony. When she recounted passing blood clots larger than her fist, one doctor patted her on the knee and said, “It’s all in your head, dear.” Eventually, one doctor tried prescribing birth control pills that barely dinted her pain. By 1967, Mom spent part of every month writhing in anguish, bed bound with heating pads and hot water bottles, unable to function for days.

            Dad became Mom’s advocate and eventually found a military surgeon who listened to them. He ordered X-rays and suggested surgery because of an unidentified mass he spotted. He advised that he would probably need to remove Mom’s uterus, which my parents agreed to immediately.

            However, when the surgeon noted that Dad was Catholic, he knew that he would have to consult with Dad’s priest to get permission from him. Imagine my mother’s furor to learn that after all of the years of doctors’ knee patting condensation, she needed another male’s approval for a hysterectomy. My mother wasn’t Catholic. My father was, and so her surgery was delayed until after the doctor proved to the priest the medical necessity of the procedure.

            Mom’s long ago miscarriage had torn her uterus. With every menstrual cycle, endometrial tissue seeped into her abdomen and adhered to her ovaries, Fallopian tubes, and pelvis. Once the surgeon opened her up, he found metal sutures from the appendectomy she had as a teenager with endometrial tissue attached to the entire area. He told Mom after he was finished that he was ashamed so many doctors had dismissed her and the obvious suffering she bore monthly.

           

            Unfortunately, Mom’s story in the 1950s and 1960s continues even now with many women seeking reproductive care. Today, patients and physicians pit themselves against merciless laws that needlessly endanger personal freedoms.

 

Copyright 2024 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman