Global Women's Voices: Share Personal Stories

Kialing Perez, Bolivia

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While I was doing my first years in the faculty of medicine, and during my first surgery rotation; I found something that made me reflect about life and death. It was an adolescent girl; she was 15; lying on a hospital bed near the windows, through which the sun shined. Her husband was not older than16; he seemed very sad. As I would if that woman dying on the bed had been my wife whom I had just married.

I was curious about this case, one because she was in such bad shape and because most cases that we see of abortion gone wrong are from young, single women, that would do this to solve the problem before their parents found out. But in this case they both seemed very in love.

Although she couldn’t breathe very well because of all the equipment connected to her body, they would hold hands, and they would look at each other, and even laugh when she was feeling better. But surely t they did not realize how serious was their case.

Her doctor was a very good and kind man and you could see his commitment to treat her or what was left of her. Sometimes I didn’t wanted to enter their room, it was hard just to see it form a distance; her thin and tired body fighting the infection that had propagated from her uterus to every corner of her system.
I believe that her doctor was also not very optimistic about the case.

But he would buy expensive medicines, and personally cared for her three times to the day. During each treatment the husband had to leave the room, but he stayed close to the door and occasionally I saw him crying while he heard the moans of pain of his wife.

Probably this story sounds like a soap opera because of the vivid descriptions, but that is how I lived it, and although I could not relate specifically I was able to see all the pain that this young pair was going through.

Finally I finished my rotation of surgery and I never heard from them again. The last time I saw them they were in the same position as always. He was seating on the ground at the feet of her bed while holding her hand. I suppose that it was not to let go of her.

Since then I have wanted to do something more. More than just to think about the couple at my surgery rotation, and also think about what can be done to provide to these people a healthy and safe atmosphere, after all abortions are going to be practiced whether the are legal or illegal.

updated: 7/14/2004