OF BLOCKED TUBES...

So today am in the usual, very jam packed clinic working my school fees away, when this lady walks in. Young lady not more than thirty years of age. She has been on follow up in our institution for the last year or so on issues of infertility.

On her last visit, she had been admitted with a diagnosis of primary infertility for tuboplasty (an operation done to open up the blocked tubes). Unfortunately, when the doctor went 'in' the situation was grim, the blockage was too close to the uterus, an area that is almost impossible to venture into due to the thickness of the tube, the menacing blood vessels that lie beneath there waiting to be poked and give the doctors grief plus success rates on this area are very poor. So the operation had ended as an open and literally shut case! With advise to the woman to seek '''other options''.

So today she comes in, she has done a repeat HSG (an xray that is done to delineate the uterus and tubes) just in case the surgery worked......HOPE for a desperate soul. Unfortunately for her, I had no hope to offer her, tubes are still as blocked as ever. I told her, she has other options, IVF(donation and implantation of an embryo into her uterus), here the procedure costs an arm and a leg, and remember it usually requires repeat implants due to pregnancy losses associated with it. Her, she is a housewife(not the celebrated real housewives of Atlanta or New Jersey...Who has watched that reality show???whaaat???) and her husband is a driver....need I say more?

Option number two-adoption. Africans have something negative about it....(Why? there are too many motherless and fatherless children out there, looking for someone to love them back!) She was downcast, sad, forlorn, desperate, very very heartbroken. I can only imagine what she will have to tell her husband when she gets home in the evening....

I felt tears well in my eyes, and today I pray for every woman out there in the pursuit of a child........the long, dark,rugged and sometimes very disappointing road!

OF PAP SMEARS

So last week on Friday I was in theatre doing Examination of women with cervical cancer under anaesthesia.For those who are in the profession you know that this is not an exciting thing at all. I went in ready to tackle the five women who were waiting for my examination. So along came the first lady, an elderly cucu and she had pretty advanced disease and the tumor just reared its ugly head at me as soon as I put in my tools of trade.....sad! Next was a middle aged lady, she had advanced disease but this time her tumor was ingrown......a rugged, nasty, gross aggressive thing....horrible! Next was a thirty something( I Say this with a pinch of salt seeing as I had a birthday recently....Twentieth!) and I remember praying and asking God to please let this be a better story. But alas, as soon as I put in the speculum, the menacing tumour glared at me and bled with so much gusto like it was leering at me and saying...."I got here first doc! Ha! In your FACE!". The next was a forty something and lets just say-HORRID!

Cervical cancer is caused by a virus simply known as HPV. It is on the increase and we are now seeing very young ladies suffering from it. Once it attacks, it is so vicious and in advanced cases, the ending is sadly.....just that, sad! In our out patient clinic we get to see so many terminal patients who have nowhere else to go and being a referral unit and not a Hospice Centre we actually have nothing much to offer....

The most exciting thing about Cancer of The cervix is that it can be detected early and early detection is tantamount to CURE....AS IN SERIOUSLY......CURED! HEALED! and what does it take.... a simple PAP SMEAR. Ladies, dudes with ladies in your lives, we all have mothers,we all have sisters and aunties, even the sister-in law you don't quite get along with... all it takes is a five minute procedure at the gynecologist clinic and we can eradicate this monster.

So, this week, if you do nothing else at all......please get a PAP smear done.....and at our facility, it just costs  a hundred bob! Come on people, PAP SMEAR PAP!