Maybe next year I will just take the whole month of October off.
I keep getting the feeling that the enemy of mankind is putting in overtime in both big stuff (Terri's fight for life) and little stuff (marriages under stress).
I just know that in all the years I have been doing midwifery, I don't think I have ever had a month with more weird and scary stuff happening.
I have had some great births, too, but they kind of get lost in the shuffle when the guacamole hits the fan.
This month, I have had the dubious pleasure of taking Mr. Toad's wild ride on a gurney, with my hand inside a woman holding her baby's head up off the umbilical cord, and then assisting in her emergency cesarean (never mind that it had been 3 years since I last scrubbed in for a cesarean - the resident had the night off and the other OB and other midwife were both busy taking care of the rest of the patients. mom and baby did OK, thankfully.
I have had a patient with retained placenta where the OB and I were running ragged to try to save, first, this woman's life and second, her uterus. Normal labor and birth, then, 1/2 hour later - boom - hemorrhage of 1500 cc blood in about 10 minutes - imagine 2/3 of a two liter soda bottle - just pouring out.
And those are just two of the many 'interesting' events this month has brought.
I have been praying to St. Gerard and Blessed Gianna for one thing or another practically every shift I spend in-house at the hospital - in thanksgiving when things go well and in panic and petition when they don't!
I think I am going to try to find a relic of Blessed Gianna.
I am so looking forward to All Saints' Day!
1500 cc?! holy macaroni.
the gurney ride sounds scary enough.
two units PRBCs, who knows how much crystalloid, 800 mcg misoprostol, 1 amp methergine, pitocin out the yahoo, the OR on standby, - it was quite a scene, let me tell you!
I've said it before, and I'm saying it again here: I could NEVER do what you do! Thank God there are people like you who do it though. Your career is more than a job, it seems almost to be a vocation. Hang in there, Alicia! You are making a concrete, positive difference in God's world every day. Not all of us can say that.