“We don’t take walk-ins,” the receptionist at my obstetrician-gynecologist’s office at a large academic medical center told me when I showed up without an appointment on a Friday afternoon and asked to be seen by a nurse.
I was close to 28 weeks pregnant. I’d suffered severe headaches throughout my pregnancy. For the past several days, my feet and ankles had been so swollen that I could not lace up my sneakers. The night before, while receiving an award, I was so short of breath that I had trouble speaking.
The prior weekend, I phoned the nurse on call and told her my blood pressure had been gradually increasing. She believed my symptoms to be a “normal” part of pregnancy and told me to call back if my blood pressure rose over 140/90. I’d just received a blood pressure reading of 142/94 at a medical appointment that wasn’t pregnancy-related.
