Last January, I suffered a miscarriage after five weeks of pregnancy. I was frightened to discover how trivialized the health system was for this condition, which gave me the impression not only that it didn’t matter, but also that I didn’t belong in the emergency room. The sequence of events showed that this traumatic invalidation of my suffering could have cost me my life.
I went to the emergency room on a Monday evening around 6 p.m., on the recommendation of Info-Santé. Having already experienced a full-term pregnancy for which I obtained quality medical monitoring, I believed that I would be entitled to equivalent care. The comparison between the two treatments was even more cruel, sending me the message that I did not deserve to be taken care of.
Before 12 weeks of pregnancy, medical personnel take little notice of a miscarriage. One in six pregnancies ends in miscarriage, the majority of which occurs during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.1. In other words, miscarriage is an extremely common phenomenon among women, but never a trivial event, regardless of the number of weeks.
Despite the great emotional distress I was in, no particular measures were put in place to support me.
Around 2:30 a.m., after eight and a half hours of waiting alone, crying, on an uncomfortable chair in a room whose lighting prevents you from closing your eyes to doze, and going back and forth to the toilet to change your clothes. sanitary napkins soaked in blood, I finally saw a doctor. “It’s definitely a miscarriage, there’s nothing that can be done. »
No medical intervention could have stopped my miscarriage, but just because it couldn’t be prevented doesn’t mean that specialist support isn’t necessary. Alone in the waiting room, I repeated to myself: I am being treated like this because I “failed” to complete the 12 weeks necessary for humane treatment.
A dangerous promise
This trivialization of women’s suffering is not without consequences. I swore to myself that I would never return to the emergency room in a similar situation. It was this promise that almost cost me my life.
Last March, after four days of incredible pain in my lower abdomen, I finally had to return to the emergency room, reluctantly. That same morning, I had doubts. “What if they don’t believe me? », I wrote to my friends. I then thought I was experiencing “normal” ovulation pain, the tests for which had been strangely positive for too long. The pregnancy tests were negative. I finally went there.
When I arrived, I indicated that the pain was coming from my reproductive system. The triage nurse quickly dismissed what I was telling him, telling me that it was probably kidney stones, thereby giving me priority due to this pain that he had obviously already experienced. The emergency doctor also dismissed my impressions, believing instead that it was an attack of appendicitis.
Five hours after I arrived at the emergency room, my fallopian tube exploded, causing such severe pain that I lost consciousness, as well as the start of internal bleeding.
It was in fact an ectopic pregnancy, a pregnancy during which the embryo develops outside the uterus. I can’t think about what would have happened if I hadn’t gone to the hospital before the bleeding started.
We can wonder if more adequate follow-up of my first miscarriage could not have prevented this possible complication, which cost me one of my tubes. And even though it was a new pregnancy, how did I get to the point where, so traumatized by my dehumanizing miscarriage experience, I chose to ignore these alarming signals that should have led me to the emergencies well before the breaking point?
My story joins those of thousands of women whose dealing with miscarriage has been traumatic and dehumanizing.2. Some hospitals have implemented a protocol for bleeding before 12 weeks which aims, among other things, at more humane management of this very common situation.3. Extending this protocol to all hospitals would already be a step in the right direction. Whatever the case, we must put an end to this trivialization of women’s suffering, which leads us to believe that it is not worth treatment or a trip to the emergency room.
1. Consult the “Miscarriage and mourning” page on the website of the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec (INSPQ)
2. Consult the study “Miscarriage Matters: The Epidemiological, Physical, Psychological, and Economic Costs of Early Pregnancy Loss”
3. Read the entry “Miscarriage” on the Born and Grow website
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reference: www.lapresse.ca