PSYCHOSEXUAL PROBLEMS IN THE CONTRACEPTIVE CONSULTATION – CHOICE OF VENUE AND DOCTOR (CONTRACEPTION AND FAMILY PLANNING)
Another woman attended a community family planning clinic rather than her own GP (a keen enthusiast for contraceptive provision who was always trying to persuade her to attend him instead!), because she wanted to be supplied with two diaphragms. One she left in the drawer at home in the mornings, the other went to work with her to be used with her lover at lunchtime. The secret had to be kept from her GP who was a golf partner of her husband.
A 30-year-old woman registered with a different GP for her contraceptive needs from the one she attended for general medical care. She explained the change by complaining that her regular doctor had told her that, at 30, it was time she came off the Pill and thought about a family. She also complained that he had not treated her vaginal discharge properly as she still had it. How easy it would be for the second doctor to side with the patient and believe that the first doctor had been tactless, insensitive and incompetent. The second doctor felt that the woman had some other hidden reason for her disproportionate distress and anger with the previous doctor and enquired further. Eventually the woman revealed that she had been unable to tell the previous doctor that her partner was already married with a family of his own. She had concealed how angry she had been with the doctor for making her confront the knowledge that she would never be able to have a child of her own if she continued with the same partner. Her complaints of vaginal discharge and loss of libido could only be understood within the context of her circumstances, hidden from her own doctor because of her shame, guilt and anger.
*288/197/1*
