heavy bleeding

"You know, I'm not religious, but I can't help thinking that this is God's work..."

So said my nurse colleague as I entered blood work results for a patient. The patient was a woman in her early 40's, bleeding heavily from the vagina. She was undergoing fertility treatment and it wasn't working.

The nurse then proceeded to list cases she had seen that confirmed her theory. People who'd had abortions early in life, then failed to get pregnant later. People who had given up children, only to regret later infertility. She said, blithely confident, "if you waste your chances, God will make sure you regret it later..."

I've been watching The Handmaid's Tale over the past two weeks. It has been scaring me. It's too real - under the surface of our seemingly progressive society, people are harbouring judgements about who deserves to suffer, who deserves happiness. I have been reassuring myself that, in Canada, we have entrenched abortion rights. We have guarded "universal" health care. We have the right to access birth control and fertility treatments and we support same-sex parents and...

It all rings a little hollow when your colleague, whom you like and respect, spits out the wrath of God at an unsuspecting patient.

I know, I know, we all bitch about our foolish patients and the choices they make (smoking! drinking! washing the blender while it's still plugged in!) but this seemed particularly vicious and unkind.

It makes me worry what she's thinking about me - one child, older than 35 and trying...What she's thinking about our other RN - one child, unable to have a second for medical reasons...What she's saying to the patients she triages - "This is your fault. You did this to yourself. You deserve this."

I hope that her professionalism is better with patients than it is with me. I hope this was a sign of a bad day, and not a burning dissatisfaction that leads to extremism. And what I really hope is that she is one of a kind, and not a harbinger of changing attitudes to come. The US is too close to ignore, but I hope we can oppose the attitudes creeping across the borders. For me and my patients.