I suspected that I was having a miscarriage two weeks ago. I tried to get a referral to the early pregnancy unit through my GPs but I couldn't for the life of me get an appointment or a telephone appointment for a referral, despite explaining my concerns re: ectopic pregnancy to the receptionist. I managed to make a self-referral in the end.
As I suspected, I was having a miscarriage and the EPU sent me home with a pregnancy test to do 10 days later to make sure that my pregnancy hormones had gone/were going. All very upsetting, but I was doing ok until...
...yesterday I had a message to call the district nurse at my GPs. I called back but she was busy, and the receptionist told me that there was a message on the system for me but that she couldn't give it to me because the district nurse would want to talk it through. Fair enough, I thought, and waited for the district nurse to call me back.
About an hour later, I had a call from a male employee of the GPs. He's not a receptionist but not a health care professional of any sort. He has called me previously to ask me to come in for blood pressure tests etc when previously pregnant.
The conversation went something like this: Cheery voice "Hello love, the hospital say you need to do a pregnancy test abnormally cheerful here, as if it was a good thing so can you bring a urine test in please love".
I was so upset. Before you start with me (
), I am not annoyed that it was a man who called or that he called me 'love' (although this didn't help the inappropriate tone given the context). I'm annoyed because the district nurse clearly previously thought that she or another nurse needed to speak to me, given the request and the context surrounding it. Maybe (god forbid) she was also going to enquire as to how my miscarriage was going - whether there was continued bleeding/clotting/anything else.
For whatever reason, it was then decided that this wasn't important, so someone was told to call me and either (a) didn't know that he was asking for a pregnancy test to confirm that MY BABY HAS GONE, or (b) hadn't had sufficient training to deal with this sensitive issue. My general (and less emotional) view is that a trained professional should follow up on these things, which is clearly what they originally thought.
So, for my sanity, AIBU? I