Women Who Get Sterilized and Live to Lie About It

“PATIENT’S HUSBAND DOES NOT KNOW SHE HAD A TUBAL LIGATION.” This statement is written in big red letters across the patient’s chart, and I’m thinking, WTF? The patient has come for a consultation about getting her tubal ligation reversed in hopes of becoming pregnant again with her new beaux. He’s with her and will be joining her in the exam room, and somehow, we clinicians must concoct a charade that glosses over the fact that she willfully tied her tubes in the past as we explain the reversal procedure.

I don’t know which aspect of this scenario troubles me most. First, she has lied to her husband/boyfriend/baby daddy/partner about her fertility in a pretty emphatic way. Perhaps, she’s afraid he won’t stay with her if she can’t bear his child, never mind the fact that she already has four and is fast approaching 40. Whatever, this is no excuse for the idiotic ruse in which we all now have to participate to protect her privacy of lies. What is she thinking? That they’ll try to get pregnant for a few months, and when nothing happens, seek treatment. Does she plan this strategy out in advance? That’s pretty damn manipulative. Does she tell him, “Oh, I know it’s me. I had some problems in the past…I’m all messed up down there, blah, blah, blah,” which brings me to my next disturbing thought.

Is he just too stupid, ignorant, or indifferent to ask questions about how she got “all messed up down there” in the first place? Does he not think it’s weird that her fallopian tubes need to be “reattached” as if it’s normal for women’s tubes to magically tie, and in some cases, cut and cauterize themselves? Why would any woman want to be with such a clueless man? Is she so overcome with baby-phoria that she cannot comprehend the pathetic gene cesspool she’s about to dive into?

I suppose what unnerves me the most about this situation, aside from the possibility that an innocent child could be the result of this fabricated union, is the fact that so many people have been forced into this ridiculous ruse and been made to put on Broadway-worthy performances to conceal a simple medical truth. This patient has taken advantage of our duty to protect her privacy in a brazen way, and I am disgusted by her penchant for drama. She drags her significant other along for moral support as we creatively address the “baffling” problems with her tubes and how we’re going to fix them. Moral, my ass! What did I say a few posts back about bringing someone whom you don’t want to know your full medical history into the exam room? Just. Don’t. Do. It.

The truly sad thing here is that this scenario is not an isolated incident. It happens often enough to keep me in such a heightened state of agitation, I feel compelled to write about it in an effort to assuage my vindictive tendencies. Still, I’m a big believer in karma. I suppose I’ll bide my time until this woman and her lying cohorts’ come in with a strange discharge that turns up positive for Chlamydia or Gonorrhea or Trichomoniasis, and then I’ll call and tell her in very explicit terms exactly how these illnesses are contracted and listen to her wax histrionic over how this could possibly be happening to her, for about two seconds. Then, I’ll curtly ask for a pharmacy phone number, tell her that her partner needs treatment by his own physician, no sex for three weeks, and hang up the phone—no sympathy, no “oh, poor-you,” absolutely no dancing around the sexually transmitted infection facts. I can’t imagine how she’ll worm her way through this one. Then again, she’ll more than likely tell him it’s some random infection like a cold in your vagina, and he’s too stupid—or, is it smart—to ask any questions, and she’s probably already knocked up anyway, which means I should just start drinking more and thinking less and accept the fact that the future will be procreated, in part, by liars and fools.