I should just keep my big mouth shut

The day after posting about how I like to run on time, comes a day where many patients are very complicated, needy, and talkative. This is not a good combination.

I was behind from the get-go.

On time

Monday, I had office in the morning and OR cases in the afternoon. I finished up my office and then wandered into the surgery area. I was about 45 minutes early.

From the control desk: "You're here already? I just sent your room's team to lunch!"

"Don't worry, I can catch up on my medical records until they come back."

From the CRNA assigned to my room: "You are ALWAYS early!"

I blame my mother...she was extremely anal about being on time and I have the same habit.

WWYD?

Of course it was 20 weeks, not even close to viable. But her fetus had multiple anomalies, confirmed with multiple scans (including MRI). Both MFMs agreed that this was not compatible with life outside the womb. I was either seeing her or signing off on new consults daily.

She came to her visibly upset. Can’t blame her. We needed to talk, and not the usual easy “How ya doin’” type of visit. We needed to talk what she wanted to do with what we knew. Whether she wanted to terminate or to carry. Whether she wanted to do it in a big city, where anonymity was likely or here, in BFE…where it was a risk to her. If she wanted me to help her, or someone else…not an easy conversation. But a much needed one.

She decided. I supported her in the choice she made for her and the child. I’m not even going to tell you what choice she made…except to tell you I delivered two children of hers. One lived…and one died.

The Gas Passer Said WHAT?!?!

Last case of the day, a nurse was putting cricoid pressure on my patient's throat to aid in intubation. The anesthesia doc got her tubed and then was trying to pull the stylet out of the tube. He then said the following line to the roomful of women.

"I can't pull out when you're holding the long, thin thing!"

And then he wonders why we all start cracking up.

Why OB-Gyn?

Well, why not? I can tell you this - I could not be any other type of doctor.

I floated through the pre-clinical years uncertain as to what I wanted to specialize in. Maybe peds, maybe infectious disease. No way in hell was I going to enter OB or surgery. I knew, just knew that I would hate the OR.

Third year rolls around. My first month is outpatient family medicine. I discover that I dislike sick people. I hate managing chronic diseases (now take 200 mg of  drug X daily instead of 100 mg). Now, this is a problem seeing as how I WAS IN MEDICAL SCHOOL!!!!!!! I liked the procedures he did (he did some minor office surgery - I saw a vasectomy and toe nail removal in his office) and I liked the pregnant patients. hmmmm..........

Suffered through peds in November and December. My daughter was 7 months old. I was assigned to the infants floor. There was a shit-load of RSV admissions. I think I scrubbed my epidermis off, I was so scared of bringing it home to her. I was, however, the BEST at getting the RSV sample - because I was a mom already, I was really, really good at sucking snot out of nasal passages. The other students were too scared to go deep enough.

Surgery next. I had been dreading these two months. I even arranged to be placed at the hospital where there were no residents - and therefore no student call. I knew that I wasn't interested in surgery, might as well make the months as easy as possible. I FUCKING LOVED SURGERY!!!! I had a blast in the OR. I scrubbed in on some interesting cases: a Whipple, some ortho cases, many bread-and-butter choles. This was not expected. Not at all. It blew my exhausted mind.

OB-GYN came next. Had the gyn month first, again, I loved the OR. Hated my bitchy resident, but loved the surgeries. She was truly the epitome of the stereotypical OB resident.  Bitch. OB month next - again, loved being on L&D. Got to catch babies because the interns were so over doing work. The residents this month were better.

The rest of the year was psych (shoot me now), neuro (nice docs, but not for me), and internal medicine (aka eternal medicine, because all they did was round forever).

Medicine as a field is nice because there are different niches for different people. I am in the right field for me - I have a surgeon's mentality but I'm more touchy-feely than one. My patients generally are very healthy. I get to know them very well. And you know what, I can usually fix what is wrong.

I am an OB-GYN.