I had this complicated case where the baby heart disappeared and the staff OBGyn on call was called in for an Emergency C Section. She was that amazing East Indian lady. I was wheeling the gurney with the nurse into the OR washing hands looking over my shoulder at the patient in labour having contractions. The East Indian goddess had arrived and had thrown a gown over her gown. Sparkling 24 k gold earrings. Hair up, booties over high heels she was magnificent. I had been terrified at the thought of doing the C Section on my own. The baby had to come out and this glorious doctor may as well have ridden out of the skies on a white charger.
“We’ve washed enough, “ she said. “Hurry up. Hurry up.’
A surgical tray was being wheeled in as we entered.
“Scalpel.’
No issue of pressure here. She just sliced that belly open like gutting a pig. With finesse. The uterus just popped out like a dive balloon surfacing on the ocean. The anaethestist was still trying to catch up with the gas. The mother was still alert. Another cut and the uterus was open and the baby was coming out. Just a little blue. Cord around the neck. If the vaginal delivery had continued the baby would have been dead.
“It’s a girl.” She smiled. She reached in for the placenta and scooped it up. She handed the baby to the nurse letting her snip the umbilical cord having pointed where she wanted the scissor cut to be. The mother was whoozy. The anesthetist was backing off having hardly turned the gas on..
I was suturing up the uterus. “Big stitches. Big stitches”. She was coming from the other side . Her hands like an automatic sewing machine to my 2 or 3 sutures.
“Now close her up”. She again started from one side like a human sewing machine while I plodded in from my side getting two or three sutures in before we were finished.”
The anesthetist had taken the face mask off and the mother was coming around. She’d hardly been under. She was awake. Her eyes were fluttering. She was reaching up for her baby. Sleepy tired smile.
The amazing OBGyn had picked up the baby and handed it to her having the nurse put her hand on the back of the baby to hold her close to the mother. The mother was not just smiling but glowing. . The mother and child together. No one else in the room. The duo staring at each other. The great waltz continued.
“Doctor, “ a head poked in through the door. “We’ve another delivery.’
“Can you handle it, Doctor.” I was quite overwhelmed but the word doctor was affecting me. I was growing into it. It still sounded like somebody else was being called. “I’ll see.”
“Call me if you need me. I’ll be a few minutes before I leave.” Sometime when I asked how she became so quick and so good, she told me that in India she’d delivered ten thousand babies and done hundreds of C/Sections.
I went on to deliver the next baby with that staff lady ‘hanging around’. The baby was crowning when I’d scrubbed and got in the room . With grace and apparent practice the baby came out perfectly smoothly navigating the turn and twist like a seal. A perfect exit by an Olympic baby. I was only their to witness. Mother and baby were so happy with the performance.
I looked at the window in the door, the OBGyn hair up , dangling gold earrings giving me a thumbs up and a wave. The masked female Zorro disappeared into the night. We all went back to waiting the next delivery.
There was the chiropractor trying to reduce his wife’s pain with last minute manipulations. There was the acupuncturist needling his wife.
There was the guy who barged onto the ward shouting
“Where is she?”
“Where is she.”
He was pulling aside the drapes and looking into the room until his bruised wife I was admitting stood up and he saw her.
He literally charged at her and was lifting his foot to kick her in the swollen belly when I got in between. The nurse was beside me telling him to leave. His wife cowered behind us and I said “You have to leave” . We could see security coming. He was just staring at me with hate. Venomous hate. Then he turned and stomped off the ward evading the security.
I never got the back story. I just remembered the effect of rage and fear on perception. The police interviewed us and asked me how tall he was. I said I was 6 feet so he must have been 6’2 or 6’4”.
“Everyone else said he was only 5’6 inches or there about. »
I could have sworn he was taller and bigger than me,
It was night after night excitement and deliveries. . Every night I was on call we had a half dozen deliveries and I’d get one or two because I was there. Thankfully I didn’t have to do a C/Section on my own. There were more c/sections but these were usually scheduled during the day and I’d assist. No more emergency c/sections. When I wasn’t doing Obs that I was asssisting with cancer surgery in Gyne.
Today most of the cancers that I was doing surgery on back then have cures. Mostly we were end stage and doing what we could to relieve pain. The breakthroughs in research are amazing to any of us who have been around and have memories. Cervical cancer is all but prevented and cured in early stages. Uterine cancers are also detected early and surgically curable. The ovarian cancers are caught early now on ultrasound. cTScan has revolutionized abdominal diagnosis but especially so with gyne.
We had this golden age of female medical and surgical care after the dark ages of women being ashamed to complain of ‘female problems’. Thanks to good public health and prevention women were getting pelvics and examinations and early detections meant people weren’t having what I faced back in those surgical intern days. We’d open abdomens and cancer was every where.
The sad part is that today the Administration and Doctor Police are bowing to feminist and sharia pressure are discouraging doctors from ‘touching’ women. All doctors male and female in the cultural communism gambit are being portrayed as perverts and enemies. “Don’t even ask women about anything sexual unless they raise the issue,” Government is telling doctors. “Women are too sensitive to be asked about sexual matters.” Meanwhile swaggering feminists are crying ‘sexual harrassment’ if any male or female doctor so much as looks at them.
“I don’t examine any woman now.” He told me. Just one of many gp’s saying the way it was. He hadn’t even been falsely accused or had a complaint just didn’t want to take any risks.
“I’d be ashamed if someone else found disease I’d misssed” said a College registrar to a doctor on examination. The women beside me said, “she obviously doesn’t have to pay the rent.” She was an administrator so far removed from reality as to be deemed psychotic. Doctors weren’t worried about ‘looking good’. Clinicians were good and smart but they didn’t want to take any risks with their licenses.
In practice I’d ask women routinely when they had their last PAP or pelvic examination and most would say years. These were women with drug and alcohol problems, high risk, some prostitutes, their principle resource walk in clinics. No doctor ‘dared’ to do a ‘physical’ or a ‘pelvic’ or ask about their ‘sexual’ health or even ‘periods’. As a psychiatrist I made dozens of Gynecological diagnosis a year confirming my history with referral to the incredible OBGyn Crossroads service atttached to women’s and UBC. The gynaecologists were the best but the administration were back in the medieval age with their political correctness and not wanting to offend. GP’s and walk in clinics were responding to the message they were giving loudly, ‘let the women die. Better a million women die than one woman complain. » So the light went out on women’s medicine. I was there to watch it fade
I was so thankful I was there when the days were lightand the profession wasn’t dominated by increasing darkness.
One of my favourite deliveries was with this great blond beautiful family physician. She arrived in to deliver this Portuguese lady who was screaming her head off. The family physician was bigger than the patient in labour. 9 months herself.
“I don’t know why she’s screaming. She seems perfectly okay. Every thing is normal. The anesthetist and nurse can’t see anything unusual either.” I told the very pregnant staff lady.
“That explains the young man and his father I passed in the hallway.” She said.
“What?” I asked
“Two men are wringing their hands and consoling each other outside the door. It’s cultural. The louder and longer the Portuguese women scream the longer their husbands and fathers care for them in the first year. This girls going to have a year or two of loving care the way she’s going. She might even get her meals in bed! » she laughed as another loud keening wail erupted.
We went ahead with a normal delivery. The men’s guilty fearful faces looking through the window at the great mystery of creation.
The healthy baby boy was delivered . A new gurney with ecstatic mother was pushed out in the hall by the nurse.
The beautiful family physician asked the anesthetist for help getting up on the bed.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to deliver, John” she said to the anesthetist. “My waters broke during the last delivery. I think I’m crowning. It feels that way. » She said puffing Lamaze breathing.
« Would you mind taking over. I’d rather you do the delivery than put the intern out. I suspect it woud be more difficult for him. Could you call the staff lady, Doctor” she said to me as the anesthetist moved to end of the bed.
Thankfully the East Indian staff lady was on the ward. I called her.
‘She’s delivering, isn’t she? I told her, she would . But she wouldn’t listen. Her other three babies didn’t like to wait either.”
I was thankful as she carried on, passing me as she entered the holy of holy sanctuaries.. The adults were gathering and caring for one of their own. The head nurse passed me. The saints were gathering. I sat at the desk waiting, to making notes..
There were no screams. A handsome harried professional man arrived anon. I pointed him to the delivery room. He rushed in. Moments later the happy cry of another new born baby rang through the ward like cathedral bells.
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