bad manners, bedside

(you deserved better in your reproductive story)

In the maelstrom of recent events - ( you can read about this here) - I do at least have a consultant that I like. I can’t think of any consultant I’ve known to date who I’d rather have delivered me life altering news, or hold my hand as I was coming back from anaesthetic blank space. If pushed to explain why I like him so much, there is a very simple reason…

He’s kind.

Kindness. So simple. And yet - clearly - it isn’t. There is no field of medical treatment that doesn’t require ‘care’. We are treated from a mandate of ‘first, do no harm’. But words, listening and dialogue come first. Without kindness, their potential to harm runs deep. So first, listen to us. See us. Believe us. Speak to us as you would speak to loved ones.

I really want this piece of writing to be a validation. A shouted out loud statement that, in the world of reproductive medicine, we are so often horribly let down by the words and actions of our medical team, who often don’t feel on our team at all.

And, I want to be clear that I do recognise the crippling pressure on our NHS and the impact that ricochets down from this and the resources we are met with.

But. We do deserve better in the human interactions we are met with. Far better. Words wound. Lack of words wound. Their compassion fatigue isn’t ours - and it isn’t our fault. Carelessness we will and do remember, often forever. In the thick of Not Getting Pregnant we are already brow beaten… medical insensitivity kicks us whilst we’re down.

My Stories

My first fertility consultant actually wasn’t unkind. But he was incompetent, stubborn and impossible to talk to. And I don’t use the word incompetent lightly. Convinced I had a fibroid, in spite of ultrasounds and MRI’s that didn’t confirm this, I willingly went into major abdominal surgery on his insistence that this was my problem. I woke up to him telling me he had made a mistake and there was no fibroid to be found. So that was a lowlight, of many.

My second consultant at a private fertility clinic drove a very spendy car. He gave us time. He gave us few smiles. He wrote on my notes with a red biro in capital letters I wasn’t supposed to see.

Nurses have ranged from icy and wildly devoid of compassion to patient and gentle. But the balance has been skewed with so so many of the former and so few of the latter. I’ve felt unseen, unheard, mistreated, flesh not person, mishandled, ignored and eventually, furious.

And I’d write so much more but it morphs into a homogenous grand insult to my humanness. I’ve often been left wondering, rebounding from savage words and coldness, why some of my nurses chose that career. Or stayed in it. Again, I don’t say this lightly or without sufficient experience. In the totality of my reproductive chapter are eleven weeks hospitalised, two major surgeries, one minor surgery and an infinite amount of medical procedures. There has been indifference, carelessness and more than once, laser focused astonishing cruelty.

Of course there are also incredible nurses like precious things. you want to hold on to and hope you will see again. I still think of them. And of course, I’m not alone in not experiencing them as often as I needed to.

Your Stories

They matter. I asked my Instagram community to write and tell me about bedside manner experiences. It was a large and harrowing collection of tales (with smatterings of above and beyond kindness). These stories were threaded with grief, loss, trauma and narratives where the wounds of impossibly bedside manner lived on. There were things that should have felt unbelievable, but they rang oh so true.

I’m sorry if you are reading this in the shadows of dismal medical communication, whether recent or much longer ago. You deserved for it all to be kind. You also deserved apologies when it wasn’t. It isn’t the way it should be and it makes the experiences endured more brittle and lonely.

I also want to add that the way we respond to bad bedside manner is a piece of writing in itself. It’s OK if you weren’t able to say you didn’t like the way you were being treated or spoken to. The

positioning of patient and professional is complex and a particular power dynamic. It’s OK if you cried, lost your temper or got defensive. These are interactions in heightened states - the training on how to make these as smooth as possible was never yours to do. It was always theirs.