One man's meat is another man's poison

Working the night shift in the  emergency pharmacy is usually my favourite shift. Not only is the atmosphere more relaxed and laid back  but I also tend to encounter the most colourful, vibrant patients during the night. There are some patients who only prefer frequenting the hospital during the night as they sleep during the day and hence I have become more familiar with them and know many of them now on a personal level. Last night I had an encounter with two females who both hailed from completely different family backgrounds. Both women were walking the path of life with different life destinies and yet what intrigued me the most was that both desired what the other one had.

Mrs. M arrived at the pharmacy just before midnight with her husband. She was visibly distraught and her red puffy eyes indicated that she had been crying. She is a tall, slender woman with fair skin and beautiful Arabian eyes. She is also a mother of five kids and a week ago her doctor informed her that she is two months pregnant despite having been fitted with a contraceptive device that has obviously failed. Her husband explained to me that they wish to abort the baby due to the financial situation in their home. They have been frequenting different pharmacies throughout the city trying to get a drug that is used often in South Africa to bring about an abortion.Here in the Kingdom though, the drug is not available for sale and is only available in some hospitals and utilized after a gynaecologist has declared that the health of the mother is at risk if she delivers the baby or in the event a child will be born with serious abnormalities.
I honestly didn't know what to say to them. The only thing I could say was that the baby is a gift from God Almighty.Mrs. M said that she was never the type who wanted to have a huge family. However, she married into a family where her in laws and her husband wanted her to have many kids as she is the eldest daughter in law in the home. She feels that she has not given her kids the best upbringing and has neglected them many a times as she is unable to cope with them as they are all merely one year apart.

After they left, Mrs. G came by to visit me. She is a delightfully bubbly personality and lives in Dammam, the eastern part of Saudi Arabia. The people of the Ash-Sharqiyya or the eastern province are very friendly and relaxed. They have a more liberal outlook to life and many of the women in that part of Saudi do not wear the full veil. They simply wear the hijaab or head scarf.Mrs. G was in Riyadh as her mom was a patient in our hospital having undergone a major valve replacement surgery due to rheumatic fever that was diagnosed during her childhood. Mrs. G is a pharmacist as well and is the second eldest out of 10 siblings. For the past week she has been visiting me during the nights and somehow we have formed a special friendship. Last night though she opened up to me and  shared with me some of the best and the worst moments in her life.She was lucky to be brought up in a liberal educated family. Hence, the happiest moment in her life was getting married to the man of her dreams  whom she  desired to marry. Her husband is a pharmacist as well and they both studied together.Mrs. G always wears a smile on her face. However, behind this facade of happiness is actually a dark cloud of sadness. She has been married for four years and has had three miscarriages. Last year during her fifth month of pregnancy, expecting twins she miscarried. Doctors have told her that her chances of conceiving in the future will be less than before. Of course that is purely the will of God. Her husband is a kind and understanding man, however his family is encouraging him to marry another woman for the sake of having a child.Mrs. G at this point feels sad and disappointed. She wishes to adopt a baby but in this society adoption is not the best option. Her husband agrees to adopt a baby but his family are not very accepting to the idea of adoption.Also not many women here would adopt their babies very easily.

I then thought about Mrs. M and her husband who  I had encountered earlier.She didn't want a huge family with many kids and is even considering aborting her sixth child whilst Mr.s H on the other hand always dreamed of having a huge family with many kids but is yet to have one child.There are hundreds of women here in the Kingdom who are unable to conceive due to one reason or another and this brings about a huge strain on many relationships as a result thereof. I then decided that both women should meet each other and maybe Mrs. M would be willing to adopt her new born baby to Mrs. G instead of aborting the child. With me playing the middle man I decided to introduce both women to each other. I do not know what transpired between them but I hope that God willing they have reached an agreement so that both are satisfied. Sometimes God uses us as a tool to alleviate someone else's pain and suffering.We never know what life has in store for us but what I do know is that God never burdens anyone with more than they can handle.Every cloud does have a silver lining. We just need to believe in that!!!