Misadventures in Public Healthcare, Part I: Surviving Abortion

Our public healthcare system has been a hot topic for quite some time, and will no doubt continue to be one. While an overall success story in many ways, there are numerous problems. To cover them all would require more time, energy and expertise than I can muster. However, I can write about some things I do know about, and that is what me and my family have experienced ourselves.


Even still, there is quite a bit to write about. Each story deserves its own post, so I'm going to do this in three parts.


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It was 2003 and our second child was on the way. The pregnancy was in its early stages, and it was time for the first ultrasound check. The person performing the check was a graduate, but with an experienced nurse as her assistant. 


During the ultrasound, they were unable to find the fetus. Their sad conclusion was that it was a case of an anembryonic pregnancy. My wife was given some pills to terminate the pregnancy, we were appointed a private room with a hospital bed, and then we just had to wait until the pills would start to work.


After some time, another nurse came in to perform an ultrasound to see if the abortion pills had started working. He used the scanner for a long time and didn't speak. When we asked what was wrong, he just told us to wait and brought in a supervising senior doctor to confirm his find, a living fetus.


What followed was an utter shit show. Our sadness turned into anxiety and anger, as we waited for several, long hours to find out if the hospital had actually managed to perform an unwanted abortion to my wife. We also wanted some goddamn answers to how this could even happen, but all we got was silence and avoidance. Eventually, after the pills had stopped giving her contractions and the fetus was still intact, it finally started to look like we were in the clear.


There was another ultrasound not many days after. There was the same aged nurse who had previously assisted in the failed ultrasound. She didn't apologize to us in any way: Instead she showed us the ultrasound image and told us to "see for ourselves how difficult it is to see such a small thing" as if it was something an untrained person should be able to do.



"Hey, gimme a break. Try designing airplane controls yourself, will you?"

Fortunately, the supervising doctor himself took charge of treating us the rest of the way. He was also the only person in the hospital who issued an apology, and admitted that mistakes were made. In the end we had a beautiful and healthy baby_baboon, but the beginning sure was nerve-wracking.

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