Writing Workshop: To the doctor…

This is my post for this week’s Writing Workshop. If you click on the Writing Workshop tab at the top of this blog, you’ll see that the few posts I’ve been inspired to write have been sad ones. This isn’t really any different. It seems that I am destined to write depressing, emotionally-charged prose. Perhaps, when I finally get a novel finished, it will be Jodi Picoult’s footsteps I follow in, rather than Nicci French’s or Jane Green’s or Joanne Harris’s. Perhaps I will have to write about pain and death and gut-wrenching sadness. Or maybe one day I’ll find a prompt that inspires a happy post. Maybe.

4. Write a post telling someone in authority the words you wish you were brave enough to say or feel they need to hear.

To the doctor who told a fragile 15-year-old girl in her office that she would need to use proper contraception in future, as she wouldn’t get another abortion for free…

Perhaps you should have read the patient’s notes before jumping to conclusions. If you had done so, you would have known that she did use contraception, and then some – the pill and a bunch of condoms. If you had done so, you would have known that she hadn’t realised that her illness and the antibiotics she was taking could stop the pill from working. If you had done so, perhaps you would have known that a condom split. If you would have done so, perhaps you would have known that she was careful, very careful, despite being a teenager.

And perhaps you would have done your job and asked her if she was sure about her decision. Perhaps you would have checked that she had had counselling and made sure that she wasn’t being pressured into a decision. Perhaps you would have just shown a bit of compassion instead of judging someone harshly based on your own assumptions. Perhaps you would have expressed your sorrow at what she was going through, instead of treating her with hatred and disdain. Perhaps you would have just looked at her and seen that this was not a decision being taken lightly. This was not someone regretting a one-night stand and desperate to get back to parties and clubbing. This was a young girl torn between her natural instincts, her educational ambitions and the advice being thrown at her from grown-ups around her.

Were you in this position unwillingly? Was it part of your training and you had to do it against your principles? Or did you choose to be the doctor who interviews women and girls scheduled to have abortions to check that they know what they were doing? If you chose it, was it out of some sadistic inclination? If you didn’t choose it, were you unable to put your own feelings and beliefs aside for a moment and empathise?

Where are you now? What kind of doctor are you now? Do you have a good bedside manner or do you continue to patronise and degrade? Did your time in that role teach you empathy and concern or did it take it away?

I hope that, so many years down the line, you have learnt and grown and that, should another 15-year-old girl come to you in this situation, you would realise that everyone is different, that everyone’s situation is different and you would listen, ask questions and, at the very least, read her notes.

Please update your blogrolls/links/whatever to the new address: http://www.wahm-bam.org Thank you! The old feed automatically redirects, but it would be nice (if you have the time/inclination/know-how, of course) if you could change your feeds to point to this one (click the RSS posts link in the top, right-hand corner of the blog). Thank you again. (This, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to get back in the Tots100. Nothing whatsoever.