Remembering and Listening
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PROFESSIONAL ISSUES
Remembering and Listening Jessica Jonas
Received: 19 October 2011 / Accepted: 17 November 2011 / Published online: 4 February 2012 # National Society of Genetic Counselors, Inc. 2012
Keywords Defining moment . Genetic counseling . Professional development . Critical incident
None of us likes to admit to it, but there are times when it is difficult not to judge a patient. I know this not only because I have heard many a genetic counselor confess to it, but because there have been times when I have found it trying to be completely non-judgmental during counseling sessions. It was only when I was on the other side of the counseling desk that I realized how imperative it is to be as empathic and free of judgment as we can towards our patients. It was November of 2006 when I stopped taking birth control pills . Initially, my husband and I did nothing to maximize our chances of conception, preferring instead to let “nature take its course.” In March, I bought an ovulation kit, and while vaguely disappointed that I was not pregnant as the month of April issued forth with her season of new growth, I was not surprised and reasoned that this had been our first time of trying in earnest to conceive. Months came and went, each with their brightly packaged ovulation kits and pregnancy tests that offered new hope, followed by disappointment that grew increasingly sharp. When I was still not pregnant after a belated honeymoon to Austria, I decided to take action. Any semblance of nondirective counseling was shed when I told my husband, Paul (pseudonym) “This is what we’re going to do: We are going to see a reproductive endocrinologist and tell her that we have been trying for a year [to conceive]- that should ensure that
J. Jonas (*) Division of Genetics, Department of Pediatrics, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, MA 02111, USA e-mail: [email protected]
our health insurance will cover the cost of the evaluations.” I had a hunch that something was wrong and wanted to get the ball rolling, knowing that it could be months before we were able to get an appointment. Furthermore, I was determined not to be one of the countless impatient and harried patients I had seen who, in an effort to conceive without medical assistance, had let precious years and months slip by before acknowledging that perhaps help was in order. Exactly when I became that patient I was so ardently trying not to become is difficult to determine. Instead of having to wait months, we were given an appointment in a matter of weeks. Paul and I had agreed that our physician could give the results of our testing to either party, so when the requisite amount of time had passed after the hysterosalpingogram, blood work, and semen analysis, I called our doctor and left a message. Within an hour she had called me and informed me that my husband’s semen analysis showed he had a low sperm count, the sperm motility was poor, and 99% of his sperm were morphologically abnormal. “We have a lot of success with IVF and ICSI,” she said. “If you go that route, yo
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