Abdo pain

"How long have you had the pain for?" I asked.

"Today, but on and off for a while" she whispered, her voice husky. She pointed to the lower aspects of her abdomen.

"Do you feel sick?"

"Yes and no. If I leave it, it's like indigestion. It was real bad Sunday"

"And no... bleeding down below?"

She shakes her head.

"No troubles weeing?"

Again, she shakes her head.

"It's been like that for long?" pointing to the obviously distended abdomen.

"Few months"

"Could I have a listen?" pointing to the distended abdo "through your clothes, not under it I mean" hurriedly added on just in case. Apart from the privacy issue, I really was keen to ensure cultural differences; after all, it IS women's business.

She nods.

If anyone tells you auscultating abdominal sounds is easy - well, perhaps I'm not well practiced. Or I've got a dodgy stethoscope, or the ambulance is crap (well... actually... our ambulance is rather crap. Because of this new L shift, the service was a little underprepared so they had to recommission a decommissioned car. In our case, we got Car27 which lurches forward like no bodies business and accelerates at odd times - all in automatic mode. Oh, and it's also got about 267000km on one engine).

Well to cut a long story short, after a few minutes, I still couldn't hear a darn thing.

"If you don't mind me asking... when was your last period?"

Surprisingly, she didn't seem too embarrassed - "June"

Maths isn't my strong suit but... it's January, and June was about 6/7 months ago. Women normally get periods once a month right? Not that I'm a woman but I don't think I slept that much through the O&G class...

"And you've had 3 babies?" Nod.

"How many pregnancies?"

"4 but only 3 that still lives"

"...and you've had these indigestions and pain for how long?"

"'bout few months on and off"

"Anything else unusual? Any kicks? Have been checked up?"

"Yeah some kicks. And I was supposed to go today but had car troubles, and a family funeral so I couldn't"

"That's okay" I replied. I had to state what I thought was obvious. "Could there be any chance you could be pregnant?"

She shrugs. "I dunno. Haven't had a checkup"

Which basically leads me to the whole point of this post. I'm not going to get pregnant anytime soon (well I don't think I will be; and if I do - well... I think I'll get very rich), but if I was and I've had 3 children before, missed about 6 periods, have kicking feelings in the belly, get constant feelings of indigestion and have a growing belly the size of an average watermelon... I might think I might know if I was pregnant. Shrugs.