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The Complexities of Birth Control Pills
As one who has spent much of his life trying to take complicated things and make them simple, I am often struck by the gift that some people seem to have for taking simple things and making them complicated. Take birth control pills, for example.
You would think this would not be a complicated matter. “Ok, Suzi, take one pill per day. Um…that’s about it.” But you would be amazed at how many different ways I’ve seen people goof this up. I have often heard the same line, “Hey doc, those pills you gave me didn’t work. I’m pregnant.” I’ve learned that after I hear that sentence, I’m likely to hear one doozy of a story afterward. For example:
Staci: “Hey doc, those pills you gave me didn’t work. I’m pregnant.”
Dr. Bastiat: “Um, ok, did you take one pill every day?
Staci: “Of course I did! Do you think I’m stupid? I took one every single day that I had sex.”
Dr. Bastiat: “Ah.”
Staci: “My boyfriend drives a truck, and is gone for a week or two at a time. But as soon as he got home, I’d start taking a pill every day. I never missed one.”
Dr. Bastiat: “Did you ever wonder why there were 28 pills in a four-week pack?”
Staci: “Huh?”
I thought to myself, “I could practice medicine for the rest of my life, and I’ll never hear anything more stupid than that.” Over the years, I’ve learned not to say things like that. As it turns out, stupidity is a competitive sport:
Kaci: “Hey doc, those pills you gave me didn’t work. I’m pregnant.”
Dr. Bastiat: “Um, ok, did you take one pill every day?”
Kaci: “Well, no, they made me sick. So I gave them to my boyfriend.”
Dr. Bastiat: “Ah.”
By this point, it was taking me longer and longer for me to instruct women on how to take birth control pills. Most of them looked at me like I was stupid as I said, “You – you personally – take exactly one pill. Every day. Regardless of your plans for that day. Or that evening. Every single day. One pill.” But my instructions got longer and longer as my patients displayed their creativity (if not their intelligence) by finding new and fascinating ways to screw this up:
Maci: “Hey doc, those pills you gave me didn’t work. I’m pregnant.”
Dr. Bastiat: “Um, ok, did you take one pill every day?”
Maci: “Of course I did! Do you think I’m stupid?”
Dr. Bastiat: “One pill.”
Maci: “Right.”
Dr. Bastiat: “Every day.”
Maci: “Of course.”
Dr. Bastiat: “With a glass of water.”
Maci: “Huh?”
Dr. Bastiat: “You swallow the pill with a glass of water.”
Maci: [looks horrified and offended] “I don’t do it like THAT!”
So after I engaged in extensive and awkward questioning of Maci’s intelligence and my career choices, I finally realized that Maci had been inserting the pills where she had sex, and she was extremely offended that I was suggesting that she engaged in oral sex. She’s not that kind of girl.
You might think that practicing medicine is pretty boring. And on a good day, you’re mostly right. But my patients keep it interesting. Every once in a while, one of them will take my boring, simple day and turn it into something much more complicated than I thought it was. I’ve had patients who can’t read who I’ve trained to use insulin pumps, and after some work, they’ve become really good at it. And then, I have some who can’t figure out birth control pills.
I’ve learned to go with the flow. Rather than respond with, “You did what?!” now I just sit back in my chair, look up at the ceiling, and think to myself, “Hmm… I don’t think I’ve heard that one before…”
And as the years go by, my instructions for patients get longer and longer, and more and more involved. They call this practicing medicine.
After years of experience, now I can even sense when my day is about to become more complicated. For example, I start paying attention when I hear those dreaded words, “Hey doc, those pills you gave me didn’t work. I’m pregnant.”
Published in General
Superb.
When I worked one summer as a carpenter’s assistant, one of my charges would only use nails that were pointing the right way in their bucket.
Well, yeah. The other ones are for the other walls.
That’s not stupid. That’s just either neuroses or superstition.
Our daughter works for a company that, among other things, manages private defined benefit retirement plans for the senior executives of small and mid-sized companies. She got her start there as a temporary employee setting up the accounts for new enrollees. She was amazed at the number of ways these executives could screw up their enrollment forms.
Her first role as a regular employee was to create mathematical models for the company salespeople to use when setting up customer accounts. She described part of her job as making those mathematical models “salesman idiot proof.” She quickly discovered that was an impossible goal. So she just tried to reduce the number of ways they could mess it up.
Shortly after she was hired as a regular employee, she was offered a promotion, but the post-promotion role would have required direct interaction with the customers’ executives. After having seen how badly the customers’ executives did at completing the enrollment forms she had worked with as a temporary employee, sho knew she did not have the patience to deal with those people on a daily basis. The salesman idiots were bad enough. The customer idiots would be too much. So she declined the promotion. [The company found other roles that were better uses of her abilities, and she remains employed there 13 years later.]