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.