Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
After many trials and false diagnoses, Alberta Jacobs ‘14 says Worthless Health Center correctly diagnosed her pregnancy.
“I went in to Worthless after I had been feeling sick,” Jacobs said. That was at the beginning of the semester. Jacobs says that Worthless nurses first thought it was a cold, and asked her repeatedly when she had last had a cold.
“I told them I didn’t have a sore throat, runny nose, cough, or fever, but they were still pretty sure it was a cold.” Jacobs described her symptoms as nausea and stomach pains.
Going down their list of routine questions, the Worthless nurse then asked her if she was pregnant. Since she did not vehemently argue that she was not pregnant, Worthless gave her a pregnancy test, which came back negative.
Then, Jacobs says, the nurses thought it was the flu. After realizing she didn’t have fever, chills, or aches after three diagnoses of the flu, nurses at Worthless nixed that option, too. The nurse, fairly certain the prognosis was interior infancy, administered another pregnancy test.
“At first I thought it was positive,” Nurse Toozie Lewis said, “but when I called Keth Botarski over and we looked again, we realized it too was negative.”
Three months after Jacobs first came into Worthless, she began to notice other physical changes. She went back in for another appointment. After taking three pregnancy tests with false negatives, Jacobs got a positive reading.
“I was really happy they were able to figure it out. Otherwise I don’t know if I ever would have figured it out!” Jacobs said.