Ranika was a talkative, curious 17-year-old when she first walked through the doors of the Bronx community clinic where I worked as a resident. She loved Beenie Man's reggae music and dreamed of one day becoming a professional painter. I first saw her for a routine school physical exam where I gave her adolescent immunizations and we discussed her irregular periods.
Soon, Ranika appeared frequently on my clinic schedule. She would come in for cold symptoms or a skin rash but actually spent most of her visit chatting about her new boyfriend or asking my advice on the argument she'd just had with her best friend. We developed the kind of doctor-patient bond that I always imagined would be how I practiced adolescent medicine: a relationship with a young person built on trust as we partnered to keep her healthy.
On one routine Wednesday clinic afternoon, instead of seeing my usually upbeat patient, I was met by a tearful face full of fear and disbelief. Ranika told me that she had missed two periods and the pregnancy test she took that morning came back positive. She didn't know how this happened—she and her boyfriend were mostly using condoms and she came into the clinic consistently to get her birth control shots. Even though she was still in shock, she was adamant that she wanted to "keep my baby." But she was scared. She didn't know what to do or who was going to help her through this. I stood in the room with Ranika, trying to work through my own shock and figure out how I could console her. I was a young resident, and this was the first time that I was going to care for a pregnant young person. The truth is: I was scared too. |
0 comments:
Post a Comment