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!
This story reminds me of when I was an intern rotating in obstetrics way back in 2008.....it was a clinic day and a middle aged lady who had been looking for a child to no avail came to the clinic for review...she had undergone a battery of tests and procedures and she never gave up hope of getting this child....when she shared her story, I chocked up and we both literally cried......it was so sad at how other women, her hubby and entire social set up had divorced her...and she was all alone spending all that she had to try and get a baby!!!!!!!
ReplyDelete:'(
Its sad that we never want to look at adoption as an option meanwhile we celebrate those famous pple who come from the west and adopt a kid or two........we have so many needy kids who didn't ask for the situation they were brought in...to be honest, in this uncertain times we live in, I'd adopt a million kids b4 having any!!!!
ReplyDeleteKasera, really sad, I can't even imagine what her hubby will do with her. Shi, very sweet....I will take you "shopping"...too many sweet ones. I once went to Thomas Barnado Home and the sweetest lil babies were there, abandoned by their mothers, heartbreaking I tell you.
ReplyDelete