Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
DANIELA:
(26, risk score 1:238) Well, at the same time as it is a very small
risk, it is after all 238, 237 of 238 are healthy, but still I think that
somebody has to be this one, and that could just as well be my baby. Of
course it would have been even worse if it had been 1 to 40 or 1 to 20
or less, but still, it somehow echoes in my head that the risk is there, the
risk you wouldn't have believed existed.
When talking about the diffi culties in understanding the high risk
information, Daniela returns several times to the fact that she had not
expected to be at risk. She is young, 26, and has already given birth to two
healthy babies and thought that having this baby was going to be just as easy
as the other two. Of course, the thought that something could be wrong
was always there, also with the earlier babies, but not that she could be in a
'risk zone'. 'It became much more'. Being in a 'risk zone' is something that
also other women talk about. Beatrice says she knew that they were going to
calculate which risk zone she would belong to:
BEATRICE:
(32, risk score 1:219) I asked how high is this risk, and then she
(the midwife) made a circle on a piece of paper, like this, and all those
with a high risk around 300, she placed in a small circle in the middle,
which I belonged to, and then I understood that even if the risk is not so
high, you belong to a group with a higher risk than the average, and that
is a little diffi cult to understand with all the fi gures and so on.
To Beatrice, the high risk score means that she belongs to a risk group,
a certain group of women, and this understanding seems to be supported
by the way the high risk women are placed in 'a circle in the middle' by
the midwife as she tries to visualize the risk. Also in the next example, the
woman talks about herself as belonging to a risk group.
INTERVIEWER:
What did you fi nd out, what did they say?
JENNY:
(32, risk score 1:250) That I belonged to a risk group, that there
was a one to 250 chance that it would be, well that the baby would have
chromosome abnormalities [cries] in a way it is not a great chance, but
I still think it felt [cries] as if, yes as if it was almost a clear information
about something being wrong, that's how I experienced it, but you
don't think quite logically somehow [cries] (…) she (the midwife) wasn't
actually in doubt about the fi gure, she thought she had very clear results
of the measurements, so there was nothing to discuss. But still, she tried
to say, think about that 249 will be healthy and the chance is really not
very big, and things like that, to make me not break down completely.
Again, characteristic of the women's accounts is that they argue that
they
want to think in a certain way
. By many, this is expressed as 'thinking
positively'. Opposite to the arguments about being the 'one' that we have
