Dear Doctor,
I am writing this after your death because I could not bring myself to do so while you were alive. It has been years now since your death but parts of me are still haunted by what you did to me.

I came to you with the trust of an innocent, someone who life had not done wrong yet. You were a doctor. A man who saved peopled, who helped those who were in need.

Here I was just a few weeks pregnant with no insurance and scared to death. I came to your office and saw a nurse who was nice. She told me I was six weeks along and everything I was experiencing–like the nausea, dizziness and bloating–were normal. I saw you briefly after speaking with the nurse. You looked like a hard man. My gut clenched but my mind shot down my intuition. You were a doctor, not someone to fear. I was sent home with an appointment to return at the twelve-week mark.

The next week, not only was the nausea worse, but so was the bloating and dizziness. I called your office. “It’s just morning sickness,” you told the nurse to tell me.

I fought through it for another week. Then it got bad. It got really bad.

I came back to your office again afraid, uncertain. On the ultrasound, there was barely as spec on the screen. The nurse would tell me nothing. Then you came in.

You said that you were not sure the baby had a heartbeat. You said part of it was mine. You said there was nothing you could do if I was to miscarry. You sent me home and told me to bring back any tissue that expelled.

You told me that.

You, a doctor, told me to go home where I would miscarry my baby and then you told me to bring it back for tests.

Shaking and crying, I went home, alone, still sick, but now, I was truly afraid. I called a friend. She picked me up immediately and brought me to her doctor, a nice gentleman who had sympathy in his eyes and my gut said, “Trust this man.”

He did an internal ultrasound, what you should have done, and found my baby.

My baby was long dead. My baby had started deteriorating. The fetus was being absorbed back into my bloodstream. Do you know what this can do to a person? You’re a doctor, you are supposed to know. I could have died.

You sent me home to die.

That is what was happening in my body. My baby was killing me because my body was not opening to expel him or her.

I went in for a D&C the next morning. They had to remove everything that they could as quickly as they could so I would not die. Thankfully, the damage did not affect me enough to prevent me from having two beautiful sons later in life.

But there was damage from you not taking care of me like you should have. Years after my last son was born, I went for a tubal ligation that gave me more scares than it should have. That is because to do the procedure, they had to go through scar tissue the D & C had left behind. They asked me if I had had numerous abortions because the scar tissue was so bad. It felt like they were asking me if I was a whore because of you. I had to explain to them the only thing close to an abortion I ever had was the D&C, which, if done earlier when the baby had died, would not have caused as much scar tissue.

I learned after my miscarriage that you had some troubles keeping your medical status as a doctor. It was in the papers that you were not giving teenage girls adequate care. It turns out that you did not like unwed mothers and felt unwed teen mothers did not deserve the care you deemed proper to a woman with a husband. How shameful of you. You were a doctor, a man people looked up to for help and care no matter what their age.

I have not forgiven you. I will not forgive you. What you did when you left me to die was unacceptable. I will be haunted for the rest of my life because of what you did and didn’t do.

You are dead now, but that doesn’t ease the wounds you created. It doesn’t make all your wrongs just go away. I have to live with what you did to me every day of my life.

I spit on your grave. I curse your soul to a hell far worse than even I can imagine, and my imagination is quite vivid. In fact, I take that back. I don’t curse you. I will forget you. I will hope and pray that you are forgotten.

Men like you should not be remembered.

Signed,
Linda: The girl you didn’t care about.

~~~~

This letter is a condensed version of the original, which will appear in the first Unsent Letters print compilation.

Linda St.Cyr is a professional freelance writer, artist and poet. She has been published in numerous online publications including Club Mom, Associated Content and outlets of Demand Media. She is currently working on a novel while raising two children in the beautiful Pocono Mountains. To learn more about Linda and her writing, please visit her author’s website at the following link:  http://sites.google.com/site/stcyrlinda/

Tags: baby, bad doctors, doctors, medical, miscarriage, pregnancy, teen pregnancy