Drowning in this land of ignorance.



Ectopic pregnancy pamphlet

Ectopic pregnancy Pamphlet

King Edwards memorial hospital is where I had my son in 2007. It is the public womens hospital in Perth, Western Australia. I was online searching to see if anyone in Australia distributes an information brochure on Ectopic pregnancy. I found this one pictured here, you can see it too if you follow the link underneath. Most of the pdf documents I have found online have been of American origin.Produced by the obstetric and gynaecology associations.What I found most interesting was the contact information for women who required assistance with their ectopic pregnancy.

Whilst this hospital is situated in Australia, and is staffed by some of the worlds most honourable obstetricians and gynaecologists it fails to mention any support network available in Australia other than the usual mental health, pastoral care and social workers which are all so daunting and confrontational in there own right. It also says the statistics are 1 in 80 pregnancies in Australia are ectopic, these figures were updated in 2008. 

When mentioning support it lists Sids kids Australia. Which I associate with sudden infant death syndrome which doesnt seem particularly relevant to an ectopic pregnancy for a number of reasons which i wont go into now because of the obviousness of it. For online support it has two links to two websites in the UK. For some reason this astounds me,  one is the ectopic pregnancy trust which raises funds in the UK to help practitioners and women in the UK be more aware of ectopic pregnancy in the UK! The other site is the miscarriage association in the you guessed it...UK. Im not anti UK (The queen is on all of our money and I lurve money..haha) but I am anti Telstra haha and the cost of ringing a hotline to speak with someone who knows exactly what you need to hear as opposed to some generic form of social worker talk in the UK is going to cost you an arm and a leg. 

I would have thought 1 in 80 pregnancies being an ectopic would be considered quite common.Its not an extremely rare condition however I have read and heard time and time again that women did not know what it was until they were diagnosed with one, and its deadly. Its not just uncomfortable and sad it is deadly!

I wish I was in a position to do something about this. In my research I have found a common thread amongst women who have suffered from an ectopic pregnancy, emotional pandemonium, irrational fear, and complete isolation. There is so little support here in Australia for ectopic pregnancies, and I dont understand it. I have blogged about my experience with a GP i wont call him mine because I am never going back however when I asked him for help with my emotional and mental health he told me to look up psychologist in the yellow pages. How I refrained from slapping him across the face with my sweaty shaking palm I have no idea.But anyway.........does anyone have any suggestions on how to combat this? Can one person change this?

My husband told me a story recently on how one man brought down almost an entire community single handedly.

"Its true honey, One man can make a difference."





It all depends on how badly we want it, and when I say we  I mean this silent community of women effected by this. Has everyone in Australia that has suffered from an ectopic gone and got an engineering degree and built a bridge to get over it?  or eaten some cement and hardened the hell up or maybe got 50 cents and rung someone who cares.

Let me know how you dealt with it or are dealing with it or how you plan to deal with it if you arent right now ! If you are from another country, let me know what sort of support you have received or have on offer and if it is received well.

Think pink

Janey