A Very Sad Lady

Did I mention I am liking OB/GYN?

Actually, I love the OB part. I haven't done GYN yet, but I love about OB because I get a baby out of it at the end. I've been told by an OB/GYN resident that you know the students who should be in Peds because once the baby is born, they want to follow it back to the newborn nursery. That is definitely how I feel. On the other hand, women's health care and prenatal care is a topic near and dear to me; I am attracted to this aspect of the specialty.

Quick story for the day: one of my full-term, laboring patients began having bad fetal heart rates. Her cervix was only 1 cm dilated and with each contraction her baby's heart rate slowed dangerously down, and she was nowhere near ready for vaginal delivery. Finally they called the C-section, but when the mother heard this, she began to cry. She was hysterical all the way down the hallway, all the way into the OR, sobbed through her spinal block, and only quit when she received sedation. All along the way, she continued to wail, "Why me? Why God, why?" in Spanish.

Through a translator, we determined that she believed the C-section was a punishment. That this was God's judgment on her for some unspecified reason. She understood that the baby could die or suffer permanent brain damage without the C-section, but regardless, she was so scared and so sad, and she had no relatives with her. Each of the staff took a turn comforting her; the tech even wrapped her arms around the lady's shoulders and bent the patient's head down, folding her whole upper body into her chest, encasing her in a huge hug, that served both to stabilize her spine for the spinal block, and also comfort her.

Everybody tried to make her feel better. It was a heroic effort. The doctors, the nurses, even nurses who were not assigned to her, all gave her their support. Thankfully her C-section went very well, and the baby was delivered screaming heartily, with the umbilical cord wrapped twice around her neck (which explained the poor heart tones).

This may sound strange, but it really reminded me that doctors and nurses are in the business of people. Every uterus belongs to a woman; every baby is somebody's child. When you have a dozen women on the board popping out babies left and right, and you're busy running around just trying not to get in trouble and make an A in the course, it can be hard for med students to remember how basically human our job is. How our job is to make the lives of people better (hopefully). Watching an entire floor of medical professionals reach out to a desperate woman really made me hopeful for my future career. No matter how busy or grumpy or sleep-deprived I get, if I can grasp onto that feeling of humanity and empathy and understanding, I think I'll survive.

OB/GYN

I've been having a lot of fun being creative on my new creativity blog, penniesandhearts.blogspot.com. If you have a moment head on over and check it out :). It is sort of biased for the ladies right now, by the way, but I will eventually have art and writing up there, too.

I have been on OB/GYN for ... five days now. I LOVE IT! When I hit the floor and heard, "24 yo G1P1A0, postpartum day 1 s/p SVD, EBL 500mL c/b chorioamnionitis s/p amp/gent..." I breathed a sigh of relief. Back to real medicine. Ahhh............ I was even happy to be scrubbing in to the OR! And being on call overnight! (This is how much I disliked psychiatry.)

I've seen several babies delivered, cut placental cords, watched twin vaginal births (one twin was breech!!), saw a stat C-section, stat dilatation and curettage for uncontrolled bleeding, and heard an awful lot of yelling. Loving it. Birth is a miracle.

Also, just for the record, for the next baby, I'm definitely getting an epidural. Especially after the mondo vaginal tears I've seen, I'm not at all ashamed to say, I-don't-want-to-feel-that-when-it-gets-sewn-up. Guys, appreciate what women go through to make your babies.

I get the feeling I will have lots of fun stories to add to my repertoire of crazy medical school experiences after this rotation is over. Can't wait :).

Februaryyyyy

It's about to be a new month. It's about to be a new month!

I straightened my hair and did makeup. And put on jewelry.

SEE MAKEUP?? SEE JEWELRY??

Okay maybe not. Asians can only go so far with makeup or they look like clowns. But please tell me you can see that I am wearing pearls. And that my hair is straight(er) than usual, because I understand that my hair is usually straight. But I can tell the difference.

Haven't done that in awhile it feels like. Tomorrow I will do the same. Oh, and I also did my nails :). I discovered that neutral lip colors and nail colors for Asian skin tones MUST have some element of apricot or peach, not pink as their base color. I am loving a L'Oreal nail color in "Versailles Romance"from their uber-pretentious line, "Color Riche." Don't let the name throw you off, it's still only 6 bucks at CVS.

I have seen a lot of strange things on psychiatry so far. Too bad it would be a violation of HIPAA to tell you guys about most of them. I can say, however, that one should never underestimate the power of psychogenic forces. I have seen psychogenic blindness, seizures, inability to walk, inability to swallow, and inability to remember anything about oneself. It's called conversion disorder. It's weird stuff. Where the body translates stress into a physical symptom.

But if you think about it, we all do conversion at times. Stressed out? Boom--HEADACHE! Big test tomorrow? Boom--DIARRHEA!

I am looking forward to February, and the last two weeks of psychiatry. Being around so much brain pathology makes one wonder how much insanity lies within ones own cranium. Like I told my mother-in-law today, it's not that psychiatry isn't interesting. But I miss disease. I miss disease that I can smack with an antibiotic and say "I hope I don't see you in 10 days or else I've done a bad job."

Nope, I will gladly leave behind the world of it's-really-about-your-mother and psychotic patients who are crying like babies one moment, then biting people and slamming their face into tiled floors the next.

Working Mom

These past two nights, I have been taking care of Miriam a lot because Andrew is busy, and it really got me thinking about working moms. Especially single moms.

I've been down. Sometimes life just throws you awful stuff and it's too sad to talk about. That happened recently. And I've been very hard on myself about psychiatry, too. It's a fascinating field, but I can't seem to quite get that "perfect" interview yet, and my attendings have made some hard criticisms, which I hate, because I want to be perfect right away. I always want to "get it" as soon as possible, but the psychiatric interview takes so much practice, which I don't have, and then I get even more down and critical on myself. I digress.

Anyway, after I come home from my full-time job (that's how I think of it, because I'm at the hospital from 6 to 5), I don't have a moment to rest and be myself. Or cry. Or whatever. (This isn't the case when hubby is available, but like I said, he's busy). I immediately have this little one who needs to be loved and cared for and fed and ... well, she's only two you know. Somehow I have to muster the strength and energy and focus to make it through the day without breaking into tears, and when I get home all I have are the dregs from that well of reserve, but they have to be enough to feed, bathe, entertain, clean...and then study and finish write-ups after the little one is asleep.

If this is how I feel after only a few days of no hubby, I cannot imagine the overwhelming difficulties that face a single mother. Literally every day of her every waking hour, somebody somewhere is placing demands on her that she has less and less strength to meet. I have a lot of respect for working mothers, and a lot of respect for what women everywhere are doing for years. I suppose I should stop feeling sorry for myself now.

One of those days

Today:

- Car won't start and it's Not the Battery, because we replaced it two weeks ago

- Miriam has bleeding gums, foul breath, a fever and is hellishly angry at the world

- Andrew has a final paper due tomorrow only 1/2 done and a fever of 101F

- I have two exams and I'm ready for neither

- We are past the point of broke but we still have to pay for necessities with money we don't have

Friends, I am really, really stressed out. I am just thinking, okay, What Next?

:(

Conflicts

I just finished writing my reflection essay for my pediatric rotation. I wrote it about being a working mom, essentially. Not all women have the luxury of staying at home with the kids. Life may never have afforded them that opportunity. Or, like me, I have this nagging calling that if I don't fulfill it, I know I'll be doing something wrong. And I guess I also happen to be the primary breadwinner. Denying who I really am.

When it comes down to it, I know that women all over have decided out loud not to judge each other for our mutual decisions. The working woman has no right to turn up her nose at the stay-at-home mother, and neither does the home-schooling mom have any right to judge the woman who works full-time. I believe that you can be a good mother in both situations. And you can be a terrible mother yet be home all the time.

Anyway, despite this sort of social "yeah let's not judge each other," there is a definite unspoken culture about it. (Or spoken, I guess, if someone happens to be untactful). I've heard women staying at home be judgmental about "that mom" who is never around. I have heard female surgeons complain about how they couldn't stand their kids when they have to watch them all week.

I just hope that I do well by my child(ren). That I can, hopefully, join the generation of women that will not be work-bullied in a workplace of men, and will stand for themselves AND their children and say, "SUCK it dudes, I am a working mom AND I take care of the kids!!"

Thanks

I love this holiday. Stuffing one's face and laughing with family members. I feel like this is what life is about.