An Empty Womb and a Crushed American Dream

How the American medical system failed us

“Kamna, have you packed your bags, and are you excited to come to America?” my spouse Vishal asked me over the phone in March 2018.

“Of course I am eager to experience America,” I replied.

Quitting my full-time job in India wasn’t an easy decision for an ambitious soul like me.

I had been to the United Kingdom for a year as part of my work engagement. The experience and charm of the first-world country, let’s just say, made me desperate to have a better lifestyle, money, and more opportunity in the US than I had in India. My US-dependent visa seemed no less than “Charlie’s golden ticket” at that time.

I promised myself to keep my life purposeful and busy until I’d get my work permit. This would take anywhere between 3–4 years, given the uncertainty around immigration under the current administration.

Anyways, I made up my mind, packed my bags, and was longing to experience the American dream and a warm hug from Vishal who had relocated to America three months before me.

Life panned out to be the way we expected. I joined Toastmasters, a women’s finance club, gave my heart to enhance my cooking skills, and started writing on Medium.

Time went by and we decided to grow our family and have our firstborn here.

“Why not give our firstborn naturalized US citizenship?” Vishal and I discussed.

I conceived in the last week of January 2020 and got my first appointment after I’d be completing 6 weeks of pregnancy.

“Vishal, doesn’t six weeks seem to be too long a time to have an appointment?” I asked him.

“Yes, it is. But that’s how it works in America,” he replied.

We discussed it with our family friends here, and this seemed true. We decided to go along with the process and system.

My mind was completely congested with what to eat, how to exercise, which prenatal to take, and how best I could take care of myself.

“Is everything alright in my body?”, I would ask Vishal daily before I went to bed.

He assured me to stop worrying and relax.

But as they say, “Man proposes and God disposes.”

Just as I hit the 6th week, I had sudden spotting in the late afternoon.

I became teary-eyed and we called our friends. We had no option but to visit the emergency room.

This was my first ever hospital visit in America and in an emergency room.

The doctor did the basic medical checkup with vaginal ultrasound and told me that if the baby was not “formed correctly” — or in medical terms, there was a “chromosomal abnormality” — my body would reject the baby, and no medicine would help to keep it from happening.

We agreed with the doctor with a heavy heart, and drove back home. The next few hours were the most traumatizing for me.

The next morning, I had heavy bleeding. I was crying my heart out every time I peed and could sense the helplessness in Vishal’s eyes.

I never got to meet my OB-GYN and wanted to get counselling from the doctor, but as a new patient, we couldn’t get the appointment for the same day.

All this while we spent hours trying to get a same-day appointment and tired of explaining the same thing over and over to the nurses on call.

“Vishal, what kind of a medical system is this where we can’t talk or meet the doctor the same day when we are going through something urgent?” I asked him.

He was speechless, angry, and disgusted all at the same time.

Coming from a country like India, where you can visit a doctor even for a slight headache, this seems like a big problem.

After numerous calls and a heated spat with the nurse, I finally managed to get a next day appointment with my OB-GYN.

The doctor confirmed my miscarriage and convinced me that first miscarriage is pretty common. Apparently, one in four first pregnancies results in miscarriage.

I sobbed, cried and the “WHY ME?!” syndrome caught me.

Why did it happen to me?

Why was our happiness snatched within hours?

Why couldn’t my body hold the baby; I was fit and healthy.

But, as they say, “Time heals all wounds.”

We sailed through it, and I got back to my normal schedule within a week.

In the follow-up session, all my medical reports came back normal.

“You are fit and fertile; try to conceive after four months of regular menstruation,” the doctor comforted me.

I had my four regular menstrual cycles and we thought to give it another try.

I conceived again and got an early appointment with an established medical history.

This time, the doctor tested my progesterone level on the day of my first visit. But, just the day after, I had heavy bleeding in the morning.

The nurse confirmed that low progesterone could not support the implantation and yet again they couldn’t help.

This time I felt agitated and stressed out not because of the miscarriage, but because of the easy-going attitude of medical care. I don’t blame the medical system for the first miscarriage, but we feel the second one could have been avoided with proper preemptive care.

We consulted our family physicians in India and apparently this hormonal imbalance is easy to diagnose and treat.

My health is at stake due to these recurring miscarriages and it’s becoming difficult to find a doctor who can give time, attention, and solution to this seemingly easy problem.

This has been emotionally taxing; I keep on reiterating that “I am okay” but honestly, I am not.

Why was medical care reactive and not proactive?

Why was I told to conceive again without doing the required prenatal tests needed to support my pregnancy?

Why didn’t the doctor call and counsel me after my 2nd miscarriage?

Why is it so difficult to get immediate medical attention?

I couldn’t get the “Why” answers, but this has taught me an important lesson: I don’t want to crib anymore and get trapped in the victim’s mentality; I want to find a solution.

As immigrants, we realized that, unfortunately, we are not here to fix the system, but rather to advocate for ourselves and sail our way through it.

Just like any other immigrant, I had two American dreams:

• Get a job in the land of opportunities.

• Have our firstborn in the land of the free.

Both these dreams have been crushed and now we are re-evaluating our life choices.

Maybe time to plan for option B?

As George Carlin rightly said, “It’s called the American Dream, ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.”