Saturday, January 29, 2011

My heart is still pounding

I had an experience last night that had my hands shaking for a good 10 minutes afterward. A little background is needed for this. I'm in a Family Medicine residency which means we do adult medicine, pediatrics, and OB/GYN stuff including delivering babies. Anytime patients come in to be evaluated I see them, come up with a plan, run it by an attending physician (teaching doctors) and then go ahead with the plan. When its close to delivery the doctors come in and stand next to me while I'm delivering the baby. I've had 15-20 deliveries this year and it's usually a very fun experience for everyone (once the baby is out, that is).
Last night I'm on the phone with one of the teaching doctors for a patient when I get interrupted by one of the nurses who takes the phone from me and says, "you need to get in that room right now!" The doctor of this other patient had just recently gone home because the patient wasn't really dilating that quickly. Well, she dilated in a hurry and as this was her 5th child, things moved pretty quickly from there. Before the other doctor even make it to the hospital, and before I even had time to get anything on but some gloves, I'm catching a baby. (Delivering a baby is pretty messy business and usually I have a splash gown for...splashes, and some booties on to cover my shoes). Talk about getting your heart pumping.
Part of the reason that this was so heart-pumping was that 2-3 weeks before residency started I had a dream that was similar to this. Some lady was having a baby right then, and the surrounding crowd asked if anyone was a doctor. I proudly raised my hand and they said I needed to delivery this baby. Then the panic set in because I didn't know what I was doing and this was stressful enough to wake me up out of sleep (for those of you who don't know how hard I sleep, that's sayin' something). I am pleased to say that I have learned much since then, and everything went smoothly with this delivery, but my hands were shaking for a good ten minutes afterwards.

1 comment:

The MontaƱo’s said...

WOW! Brock, what a story! I'd say your hands should be shakeing afterwards... Glad everything went smoothly and congrats to you and Mel!! August is a great month to have a baby!