Postpartum hemorrhage
I just watch a video of a family thanking all the medical staff from saving their child's life 10 years previously.
Most of the time, I think I take for granted that I save lives. Probably most medical professionals do. We do our job and try to do it well and that's it.
People do call us "life-savers," and though I know I've saved people's lives, that's not usually how I think about it.
And I know I've rush people to the OR and raced to pull out babies that were moments from death or disability. Some of them will have disability regardless of what we did. We intervene on nearly a daily basis to induce people early to reduce their risk of strokes and seizures and worse.
Yesterday, after a lady was completely dilated, I was pushing with her. And with each push, her little child's head revealed itself more and more. Then finally the child emerged. The dad want to hand the child to the mom so I handed this new baby to him. We worked to get the placenta out and it came in a usual time period. Bleeding wasn't bad initially, but moment by moment the more she bled. We intervened and she bled more despite our efforts. So we rushed her back to the OR. As I left the room, I turned and saw this dad with his new daughter with his face filled with tears and fear.
She got a D&C but continued to bleed. Both my attending I knew it was atony (lack of tone) that was causing her bleeding. We put a balloon in her uterus. All the while she would pipe in and say something. It was actually pretty cute because she was calm and thanking us and asking reasonable questions like am I going to lose my uterus. We filled the balloon so as to tamponade off the bleeding in her uterus. It worked. We stood there just waiting to make sure she wouldn't bleed again.
Then every hour throughout the night, I would go into her room, check her bleeding and remove a small amount of normal saline from her balloon.
I told her in the OR (and after the fact because I never trust what they will remember from the OR) that if that had happened at home, she would've died. She lost 2 liters of blood despite our best efforts.
Sometimes I like to explain the gravity of things that have happened especially when they really are that grave because I think it helps give God credit. We don't give Him credit enough. There are so many things that we cannot explain. We like to try but ultimately the fact that often things work out so well needs to be credited to the miracle category.
That's probably in medicine why we don't count ourselves as life-savers. When things go right, we may have failed and conversely, we could've done everything wrong and the outcome could be great. I'm grateful for the time and place I'm at that I can co-participate with God's great works on this earth. You definitely don't have to be a doctor to join Him...
Most of the time, I think I take for granted that I save lives. Probably most medical professionals do. We do our job and try to do it well and that's it.
People do call us "life-savers," and though I know I've saved people's lives, that's not usually how I think about it.
And I know I've rush people to the OR and raced to pull out babies that were moments from death or disability. Some of them will have disability regardless of what we did. We intervene on nearly a daily basis to induce people early to reduce their risk of strokes and seizures and worse.
Yesterday, after a lady was completely dilated, I was pushing with her. And with each push, her little child's head revealed itself more and more. Then finally the child emerged. The dad want to hand the child to the mom so I handed this new baby to him. We worked to get the placenta out and it came in a usual time period. Bleeding wasn't bad initially, but moment by moment the more she bled. We intervened and she bled more despite our efforts. So we rushed her back to the OR. As I left the room, I turned and saw this dad with his new daughter with his face filled with tears and fear.
She got a D&C but continued to bleed. Both my attending I knew it was atony (lack of tone) that was causing her bleeding. We put a balloon in her uterus. All the while she would pipe in and say something. It was actually pretty cute because she was calm and thanking us and asking reasonable questions like am I going to lose my uterus. We filled the balloon so as to tamponade off the bleeding in her uterus. It worked. We stood there just waiting to make sure she wouldn't bleed again.
Then every hour throughout the night, I would go into her room, check her bleeding and remove a small amount of normal saline from her balloon.
I told her in the OR (and after the fact because I never trust what they will remember from the OR) that if that had happened at home, she would've died. She lost 2 liters of blood despite our best efforts.
Sometimes I like to explain the gravity of things that have happened especially when they really are that grave because I think it helps give God credit. We don't give Him credit enough. There are so many things that we cannot explain. We like to try but ultimately the fact that often things work out so well needs to be credited to the miracle category.
That's probably in medicine why we don't count ourselves as life-savers. When things go right, we may have failed and conversely, we could've done everything wrong and the outcome could be great. I'm grateful for the time and place I'm at that I can co-participate with God's great works on this earth. You definitely don't have to be a doctor to join Him...