Change of Pace

Perhaps you remember that I said, a few posts ago, how there wasn’t really enough work for me, so I had to go looking for other things to do? Well, the past five days have shown why it is they need someone like me here, even if I’m sometimes twiddling my thumbs. In my first almost 3 weeks, we had a grand total of 2 C-sections (plus 2 other very unusual emergencies). In the past 5 days, we have had 8 obstetric emergencies. Mostly C-sections, of varying degrees of urgency - but this morning, we had the first case I have ever seen of a ruptured uterus. Which is just what it sounds like – the woman is in labor, and the uterus, in contracting, literally tears itself open. Usually, as in this case, it requires an emergency hysterectomy; it is potentially very dangerous because of blood loss. There were 15 minutes there when I thought we might be going downhill, but some blood (which the bank happily did have!) and some epinephrine (not something you generally use outside of heart attacks and surgeries on very sick people) brought her back – her vital signs were like yours or mine at the end of it all. Cannot bear kids anymore (which may be a stigma here, I don’t know), but she is alive, which she definitely would not have been without us. Feels good!

In general, I would say that I am learning “how it is done here." Partly just internalizing all the new things – the layout of the operating room; where the drugs are stored (so I can be more and more efficient when called in for an emergency); what happens to kids when they are sedated on ketamine (a drug I have rarely used before now). Partly coming to better terms with that thing I fret over, the awareness of not being perfect, the guilt that there is a learning curve. The last few days – where I have seen myself actually move forward on that curve – have been helpful in that regard. 

It is strange how very hard it is for me to give up on the ridiculous, and not even very interesting, idea of being perfect….

It's all a longer, and to me very interesting, conversation, but I'm not quite ready to go into it here.

Anyway, the more familiar I feel with everything – and I imagine the more open and generous, the less worried and tight, I manage to be, too – the more at ease I am, and I begin to really enjoy it. I’m past the halfway point, now, and I AM happy about that (I’m sure that plays into the enjoyment, too). But the time remaining doesn’t, tonight, feel like a penance.

As for life in general – well, Movie Night this week was “Point Break.” (Hey, at least that one is directed by a woman, albeit the woman who made “Zero Dark Thirty.”) So, no, not much has changed. But I’m getting some reading done. And there is a new OB, a Spanish guy who has lived in the States for a long time. And today a nerdy German electrician showed up. (Do I get along with both of these guys partially because they are about my age? I’m guessing the answer is yes.) And I’ve begun calling out the snooty French people who won’t speak French with me even though my French is MUCH better than their English, which gives me a certain negative satisfaction (!). And – I feel like, if any Trump voters are convincible, the Democrats this week actually did what they needed to do to convince them, which is SUCH a relief! So, for the moment, life outside work is pretty darn good, too.

Oh, and, yes – I’m not sick anymore. Cipro turned out to be the right drug to pick (the problem could have been parasitic, in which case it would have been the wrong drug). It did it’s magic in a couple of days. In retrospect, I think I had a mild infection almost from the day I got here – these last few days have been the first time I’ve felt more or less normal, stomach wise, the whole time. Life is so much better when your stomach is good isn’t it? It’s so CENTRAL.