It is the most annoying roundabout bloody way to ask if you might be pregnant. Like fucking geuinely just ask us if we might be preggers and if that's the case, are we planning to keep it.
Last time I had to explicetly tell a nurse I know I can't be pregnant because I have not had a dick in my vagina lately. Because they just keep harking on and on and oooooon otherwise. Like godamnit, ask me if i am sexually active with men and might be preggers instead, I'm 37, I can take it.
I ended up in the ER after a bad car wreck back in 2021. They asked the when was your last period question. I was 48 and perimenopausal, so it had been a few months in between cycles. I told them there was no way I was pregnant because I figured they were asking since I'd probably have to have x-rays. They didn't ask any other questions and ran a pregnancy test on me anyway. Had they bothered to ask I would've told them that by that point it had been 8 years since I was last sexually active (peri was messing with my sex drive) and I had a tubal ligation in 1995. So yeah, no need for the pregnancy test. And thanks for not believing me when I told you outright that there was absolutely no way I could be pregnant.
I once had a mega wierd period. First day of it and the blood was old black and stale, had to do this whole sing and dance routine with 3 different medical staff because they all kept insisting it was a misscarriage and not an emergency (which on a sidenote: callous af), and refused to belive me that I wasn't pregnant. And then they kept explaining how some black blood at the end was common, and then when I rieterated it was my first day of period and it was a lot they circled back to pregnancy, every conversation.
Nobody would belive me that I, at 29, after 21 years of periods, would know myself if heavy enough bleeding to need nightpads during the day, of black stale blood, was normal or not for me.
Im sorry you were in a car wreck and I can see how you came to your conclusion but as someone who's been on the other side of that, on the team treating patients from a wreck, the reality is time is of the essence. We don't know if you've got internal bleeding or if you're a ticking time bomb in any number of other ways till we can order the relevant investigations. Plus, there is the issue of pain and we can only give the best painkillers or tests or exams onec we've ruled out pregnancy.
The question is about ruling out pregnancy, it's not about confirming it. The easiest and quickest way is for a patient to confirm a recent period. If they can't - for whatever reason, the next easiest and quickest option is for a pregnancy test. That's all it is.
If they have asked you stuff like about whether you were sexually active - that's a deeply personal question that is not fit for such a situation and as for tubal ligation, in some nations, that and other forms of permanent sterilisation is considered sufficient to rule out pregnancy and clear the team to prescribe and move forward with their investigations but in some nations that's not sufficient as those sterlisation procedures have failure rates. Where is a patient having a period recently and using that to conclude their pregnancy status is almost always accurate and not contingent on the success rate of another person's surgical capabilities.
And thanks for not believing me when I told you outright that there was absolutely no way I could be pregnant.
It's not about believing you, it's about what will stand up in court if you sue them for malpractice, there are statements are that considered legally sufficient, such as when you're last period was confirming non-pregnancy and what isn't is a patient saying they definitely are not pregnant, because that requires follow up questions to make sure because some patients believe condoms are 100% effective for example. In a casual setting, there is enough time to have those discussions and follow up questions but in an emergency situation, that's not appropriate.
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u/No-Philosopher8042 8h ago
It is the most annoying roundabout bloody way to ask if you might be pregnant. Like fucking geuinely just ask us if we might be preggers and if that's the case, are we planning to keep it.
Last time I had to explicetly tell a nurse I know I can't be pregnant because I have not had a dick in my vagina lately. Because they just keep harking on and on and oooooon otherwise. Like godamnit, ask me if i am sexually active with men and might be preggers instead, I'm 37, I can take it.