5/10/2023 0 Comments Tell no one cobenI would look down from on high and bestow upon patients the knowledge of how self-destructive their behavior was. "I was hoping you could tell her with me." "Not yet." She squirmed and looked almost all her fourteen years. "He loves me," this fourteen-year-old told me. They talk about birth control and abstinence and that's all fine and good, but the truth is, their cool friends are having babies and their friends are getting all kinds of attention and so, hey, Terrell, why not us? The thing that always surprises me - always - is that most of these pregnancies are not accidental. I don't particularly like doing it out in the suburbs with soccer moms and manicured dads and, well, people like me. Many people believe this makes me a bleeding-heart do-gooder. We serve a Medicaid (read: poor) population with general family health care, including obstetrics, internal medicine, and, of course, pediatrics. I've been a pediatrician at this Washington Heights clinic since I finished my residency at nearby Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center five years ago. This was not the first time I'd seen a pregnant teen. She also had braces and was fourteen years old and. She had brown eyes and kinky hair and a toothy smile. Another girl was about to break my heart.
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