A MOTHER has raised fresh concerns about miscarriage treatment in Scotland after revealing her “horrific” experience of undergoing emergency surgery to clear her womb after she lost her baby at Christmas.
Alexis Atkinson, from Stirling, said she had known weeks earlier her baby’s heart had stopped and found it traumatic to continue carrying the foetus while she waited for a dilation and curettage (D&C) – a procedure to remove tissue from inside the uterus.
It comes after The Herald revealed how a Glasgow woman had been sent home with antibiotics after a miscarriage and told to wait five weeks for a D&C.
READ MORe: Pharmacists must step up checks on patient medications, Health Secretary says
In the meantime she haemorrhaged and had to be rushed to hospital for an emergency procedure.
Health Secretary Shona Robison said the five-week wait had been “totally unacceptable”, but insisted it was an “isolated case”.
However, Maureen Sharkey, lead counsellor for Scottish Care and Information on Miscarriage (SCIM), said she was encountering “more and more” women traumatised by long waits.
Ms Atkinson, 42, told how she was booked in for a D&C on December 30 2015, but required emergency treatment when she began spontaneously haemorrhaging two days before Christmas. The procedure was performed under local anaesthetic.
READ MORe: Pharmacists must step up checks on patient medications, Health Secretary says
Mrs Atkinson said: “I was wide awake. They actually scraped out what was left in my uterus while I was awake. It was horrific. Just so cold and clinical.
“It took me five months to recover and return to work. My doctor wanted to put me on antidepressants – but I wasn’t depressed, I was grieving. I had post-traumatic stress.”
Catherine Calderwood, chief medical officer for Scotland, has been asked to look into the situation both in the Glasgow area and the rest of the country.
It is understood the vast majority of D&C procedures in Forth Valley take place within a fortnight – and in many cases one week.
Mrs Atkinson and her husband previously suffered a miscarriage in early 2014, when she was six weeks’ pregnant. It took them more than 18 months to become pregnant again. As she had previously lost a baby in early pregnancy she sought an eight-week scan at a private clinic, and was reassured when it picked up her baby’s heartbeat.
However, a week later she began bleeding and attended the early assessment unit at Forth Valley Royal Hospital where she said staff told her the heartbeat was gone.
Although the previous scan had detected one, Mrs Atkinson claims to have been told the private scan – even though it had been conducted by the same sonographer, who worked in both NHS and private practice – could not be taken into account, and that it was possible it was simply too early in pregnancy to detect a heartbeat.
She was discharged and asked to return in two weeks.
READ MORe: Pharmacists must step up checks on patient medications, Health Secretary says
Mrs Atkinson, a nursery school manager, said: “I had to then wait two weeks and go back again to have the confirmation that I had indeed lost my baby.
“Meanwhile I had spent two weeks at home knowing fine that I was carrying a dead foetus.
“By the time I went back for that second scan they said to me it was too close to Christmas and they could not fit me in for a D&C until December 30, which was another two weeks away.
“That’s why the case of the woman waiting five weeks really resonated with me. Although it was a two-week wait for the D&C, it was four-week wait in total for me from the time I knew that my baby was dead. That was four weeks too long.”
Mrs Atkinson, who now has a six-month-old daughter Piper, praises counselling from SCIM for helping her to recover.
She added: “I was completely traumatised by the whole thing.”
READ MORe: Pharmacists must step up checks on patient medications, Health Secretary says
A spokeswoman for NHS Forth Valley said: “Women in Forth Valley who opt to undergo surgery after a miscarriage are seen and treated very quickly, normally within two weeks, and this would only be postponed if they required to undergo further treatment, scans or tests.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel