The youth of today…

In clinic today. Lots of kids, all on chemotherapy for various cancers. Lots of potential side-effects of chemo, including hair loss, nausea and the topic of the day, infertility.

One of the patients was a teenager who had an interesting question – well, actually his mother raised it when we were just thinking about long-term effects of his chemo. She just said ‘of course, there’s a girlfriend now’ and straight away my consultant said ‘you must assume that you are fertile and take proper precautions’ while the mother nodded enthusiastically.

I was shocked!

No ‘that’s nice, do you go to the cinema/bowling/whatever?’, just straight onto contraception! Gosh, I’m so naive.

Just feels a bit weird giving contraception advice in a paediatric clinic!