Years ago I when I was about 6 weeks pregnant I went for an ultrasound due to spotting.
The ultrasound tech was extremely insensitive and cruel. I was terrified during the ultrasound because of the sporting and the fear of already having lost the baby.
She saw how nervous I was and told me that I needed to stop or I would have a heart attack.
She had a lot of trouble finding the heartbeat so she had to do an internal ultrasound. She found the heartbeat but she said it was very slow.
By this time I was crying. As I got up to leave she said the following words:
“The heartbeat is there today but I don’t know if it will be there tomorrow.”
The next day I had a miscarriage. I never asked her about the viability of the pregnancy . She just came out and told me. What did she see? How the heck did she know?
Telli, you have my sympathy. I’ve sadly had a number of miscarriages (fertility issues), and also had my share of insensitive ultrasound techs. She had no right to speak to you that way, and technically she was not supposed to tell you anything. It was up to a doctor or PA to interpret the test results, and speak to you afterwards.
As to how she knew what would happen? I guess just experience, and the slow fetal heartbeat. Still, she should not have said anything.
I’m sorry for your loss.
Wallet
If it is any comfort at all, that bitch sucked at her job. I know you didn’t report her, since you were in mourning, but I hope someone did and she lost her job. Which is what Wife, a Rad Tech, would say.
To try to answer your question without commenting on how the tech should have kept her piehole shut, a slow heartbeat is a very bad sign, even in a term baby.
My son got stuck in the birth canal. He crowned, but three hours later, had made no more progress (and I really was trying!) so the OB tried two different styles of forceps, and could not get him out. Then, the decision was made to do a c-section. Everything was proceeding very calmly. My son had been on a monitor since my water broke 27 hours earlier, and his heartbeat had been normal. They came and shaved me, and brought in the consent form for me to sign, we were waiting for the anesthesiologist to come and restart the epidural, and when I was numb, the surgery would proceed. Suddenly, his heartbeat dropped. Then, everyone was in a hurry. There was no time to wait for me to be numbed, and I was put under with a mask. DH was present by virtue of the fact that he had already changed into scrubs and washed up, but he was literally pushed into the OR from his briefing, which was never finished.
I am fine, and my son, who just turned 11 is fine, but he was born blue, and had a birth Apgar score of 1. His five minute Apgar was 8, so the team that revived him clearly was excellent, but also, clearly, there was no time to spare when his heartrate dropped.
I have no idea whether the stress of being stuck caused his heartrate to drop, or if it was just one of those things. He was in an isolette for 12 hours as a precaution, and on a monitor for 48 hours.
Anyway, I think a slow heartrate is just very bad news, and there probably isn’t much they can do for a pregnancy that new. FWIW, I think 6 weeks is about the threshhold for hearing the heartbeat, though, so that’s probably why she had trouble finding it.
I also had the supreme bitchiest of bitches of a nurse when I had my miscarriage. I was in my second trimester and was very distressed because blood was literally pouring out of me, running down my legs. She asked me when I had last been to the doctor and I said something like “I think 7 or 8 days ago, I can’t remember” and she replied “well I don’t see how having a miscarriage can give you amnesia”.
Even today 20+ years later I am still shocked at her behaviour.
I’m not as angry at the tech as some seem to be. If she was violating laws or professional rules (of the time/place), then definitely should face consequences. But I’d tend to think someone going in to see if she was miscarrying, then she’d want the medical professional’s professional opinion about what was happening, unless otherwise specified. Though OP said she was cruel, the tech’s dialog does not seem have been cruel to me (from dialog description only- don’t have tone of voice etc), but rather to have been trying to get the idea across without actually saying it outright to a patient who was already very upset (ie, break it gently that it was likely). And “calm down” because panicking won’t do any good and might do the mother harm.
I suppose it’s remotely possible the tech somehow perceived the doctor as not being honest with the patient, if the doctor was reassuring her that everything was OK when it wasn’t, and the tech thought that was wrong, and the patient should be given the naked truth.
If that was the case, it was really an issue to take up with the doctor, and if the doctor didn’t agree, the tech could take it up with the facility that gave the doctor privileges.
What the OP perceives as “cruel,” the tech may have thought of as “laying it on the line,” or something.
However, it’s still my opinion that she overstepped her bounds, and even if she had the best of intentions, it backfired. Which isn’t, of course, the primary reason for rules about doctor/patient communication, but it’s one of them. Doctors have training in breaking bad news. Techs do not.
So, I’ll cut the tech some slack, and say she probably was not trying to be cruel, and may even have been well-intentioned, but again, backfired. It’s better to do nothing when there is the risk of your action being so badly misinterpreted.
Some people are probably just overworked and say things without thinking. I had a nurse tell me when my son was three days old and not latching well that I should give up and bottle feed. He didn’t get a good latch until he was five weeks old, but I pumped and persisted, and he decided he liked breastfeeding, and then didn’t want to stop. I finally cut him off three months before his third birthday. If I hadn’t, he’d still be at it.
Well, by the time he was 20 months, I cut him down to “at home only, not ‘on demand,’” and at two, he just got nap and bedtime. He was too thin, and needed to eat things besides breastmilk.
I don’t consider these words, in and of themselves, cruel or insensitive. I think they are quite the opposite. There are not many kind ways to convey what she was trying to convey.
Of course body language, tone of voice, etc. could turn my analysis upside down.
And I agree that it’s not the ultrasound tech’s place to hand out such info.
mmm
They were delivered by a person who was not in a position to follow up with the patient’s reaction to them, nor to know what her mental stability was prior to their delivery. Sometimes there is no good way to tell a particular patient a certain piece of news. So it has to be done in an environment where the person cannot hurt herself, and where the doctor can make sure she will not be alone for a significant amount of time after receiving the news. I am not saying this was the case for the OP-- I am just saying that it really sounds like the tech was not in a position to know any of this.
While the tech may be a professional in their field, they haven’t seen the pt’s medical history, they’re not qualified to answer the many questions a woman experiencing a m/c will have. Not to mention they only have their own opinion to go on and in this instance it hadn’t been balanced by another tech or dr’s input.
I actually agree with both of you. I was thinking that “delivered very carefully” was referring to tone of voice and body language only, neither of which was conveyed in the OP. But you are correct, the info was, in fact, *not *delivered very carefully for reasons you have described above.
mmm