There are a few things for you to know about our clinic so you will be prepared on the day of your appointment.
#1 Please expect to spend anywhere from one to eight hours at our facility. We will escort you through the preliminary, medical, and recovery processes as safely and respectfully as possible, but you are seeking a deeply stigmatized procedure, and we must slay dragons on your behalf.
#2 We do not accept checks or cash. Please be prepared to pay for your services with a money order, debit or credit card. We understand that this complicates a majority of real-life scenarios, but when we accept cash, everybody pays with cash, and then someone who probably waited too long (because *we forgot to inform* them of #1) will eventually rob us.
#3 Please bring paperwork (variable by state and patient background), and prepare to answer several questions openly and honestly. We are here to help you and will support your health care needs with concentrated medical expertise and painstaking confidentiality.
#4 There will be protestors but please understand that they terminate pregnancies too.
#5 Please bring no more than one support person. We respect your desire to be involved with family and friends throughout your experience, and we understand the limits and obligations of parenting, but the surgery you seek is common, and we simply cannot comfortably and privately accommodate the soul-group of every human-being.
#6 We ask that you not bring children into this facility. We know there are other parts of the world where both intentionally pregnant and unwantedly (sic) pregnant women gather in practice together, and the world will progress, but here we revert to 1 through 5 and repeat: We cannot accommodate children.
#7 Lucky charm
#8 Please allow me to provide directions for traveling to, entering, and exiting our clinic...(variable by clinic and terrorist actvity).
#6 I know this one varies a lot by clinic! And I've heard very reasonable rationales for both policies. The one where I work now accepts kids in the waiting room if there is another adult present -- but as you say that makes a lot of people in that waiting room! Because, like, women seeking abortions have FRIENDS and FAMILIES and shit. Just like real people!
ReplyDeleteOne idea I love is to provide onsite childcare, if you can take care of whatever additional insurance or licensing would be required for that. Though sadly I heard this fucked-up story about a clinic on the West Coast that shut down their childcare service because antis took to harassing patients' CHILDREN. Verily they are endowed with limitless assholitude!
oh AND omg I can't count the times a client says we didn't tell her some extremely important thing about her appointment (like not to eat beforehand if she is going to be put under!). Mostly I chalk it up to having too much going on in her life and being in the car on her way to work or trying to fix dinner with a kid in her arms thinking she can just remember everything I'm about to say when I ask her to grab a pen and paper.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your insight, R. I agree that policies and information absorption vary according to clinic and patient ( and patients' 5 billion obligations as righteous women). However, I'm fairly certain that slaying dragons is a universal practice ;)
ReplyDeleteI enjoy daydreaming about health care facilities that provide comprehensive health care to human beings throughout the lifespan and love to hear of clinics that are creatively making it work.
Vancouver Island Women's Clinic is one of my personal favorites: http://www.viwomensclinic.ca/
Daughter of Wands, I love that clinic's logo! So warm :) Thanks for sharing the link.
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