doubt in remission

I have been having my doubts, as I often do, why the hell I work in a hospital. Long days with adrenaline pulsing through your veins is no way to live a relaxed life. Especially in labor and delivery, you never know what the day may bring you. 

When I woke up this morning, I thought I would rather weed thorny bushes in the Kalahari desert, with 3rd degree sun blisters and no ice water in sight, than go to work. It is hard enough working on a Sunday, and when the weather is the least bit enjoyable, it is gasoline to the bonfire.

The moon is full right now and for those who follow the ebb and flow of lunar waxing and waning know that the full moon brings the babies. This month has been no exception. We have been exploding out the roof with babies and more babies.  At one point yesterday, every room on the postpartum floor was full, every room in the labor factory was full and we had women lined up out the door as if it were some hot night club. Needless to say, the underpaid and overworked nurses have been pulling double time. 

Despite the fact communication is practically non-existent on this unit, everyone seems to get by and luckily the babies turn out just fine.  Phew. 

This morning was looking rough. Five, I repeat FIVE, nurses was all that was scheduled. (P.S. Clinical Coordinators, It is not smart to down-staff on the weekends.) Unlike the mail, labor doesn't cease on Sundays. To give you a taste, my patients blood pressure was 154/102 and this was her fifth baby. The cord was wrapped tightly around the neck....blah blah, baby was fine and mom was healthy but I was miserable.  There are only so many 300 pound women I can move on my own until I start to think how uncool my job can often be. It was at the exact moment when the patient barfed up buckets of bile that I was wishing I had a nice little office job, nestled into a cubicle with the hum drum of computers buzzing in the foreground. 

4 o'clock rolled around and I get a new patient. She is a certified hypnobirther (self-proclaimed). Some of you may be thinking "Oh, marvelous! Right up your alley Jamie, you tree-hugging, yoga loving hippy. Just how you want it." But just to clarify; I love trees and I love yoga but I also love the convenience of epidurals and modern medicine. I have no shame! It's not like you get a metal or a fancy trophy if you deliver your baby without medicine. (In fact, the only thing you get is more pain for longer amounts of time.) These patients, these all-natural patients, from a nursing perspective, are some of the most dramatic and can often be very nit-picky and annoying. 

When I asked her to tell me her pain level, from 0-10, 10 being your arm sawed off with a very dull knife and 0 being nothing at all, she scoffs and says "I opt out of this question."

In all my experience (just two years) I have never gotten such a weird response. I gathered she had some type of a revelation that if she were to verbalize her pain, in number form, just the thought process alone would send her hormone receptors into overdrive, perhaps making her pain "real".  She was already a pain in the ass and I had only been in the room 3 minutes. Just appease the nurse lady, I have to chart something. 

All to be expected though. Her husband never once referred to 'them' as contractions, but rather preferred the more gentle term; 'the waves'. 

"The waves come about every 2-4 minutes."

"Her waves are increasing in strength and length."

"These waves are making her legs shake."

All the time I am thinking...I could file papers. I could develop photos at Walgreen's. I could.....

And just when I thought the day couldn't get any more taxing...it doesn't! I meet Cory and Rick. The breath of fresh air I had been gasping for all day long. You would have never guessed this was their first baby, they were calm as cucumbers on a 65 degree day at a Farmers Market. She was miling as I entered the room, gown on, laying in the exact position she needed for me to do apply her monitors. I crossed my fingers (in my mind) that they were not fanatics of a bizarre religious sect but rather fanatics of pain medication and ease. 

And how. 

She is from Washington state. He runs a non-profit film organization. They met on the campus of UW in Seattle. She spent her 30th birthday at the base camp on Mt. Everest. He backpacked all over Asia with his two best friends in the late 90's. She wanted her epidural right away. He cracked funny jokes about not knowing anything about being a dad. They were perfect. Our conversations bled together like runny ink and white paper. On a scale from 0-10, they were a perfect TEN.

I nearly forgot that I had another human (or two rather) to tend to, because I was so interested in Ricks Delhi story. 

After traveling for months throughout the high Himalayas, Pakistan and Nepal, him and his two buddies were traversing their way through India, later to spend 3 months in Thailand teaching (I told you...perfect), finally ending amongst the likes of the Koreans or Japanese before returning stateside. While waiting for their train in the New Delhi train station, the place I have come to loathe so much, with temperatures exceeding 112 degrees, something of an animal nature swept over his friend. His description reminded me of a scene from The Birds, when the feathered rodents attack and the people go spastic. And to this day it still remains a mystery why, but he began ripping his clothes off in a violent fashion. Like a bodybuilder too pumped with steroids, he started screaming loud, incomprehensible remarks.  Claiming that his "balls were on fire" he was grabbing for anything cold to pour it down his pants and desperately reaching into thin air to find relief from the intoxicating warmth. Rick and the other friend couldn't gauge exactly what was happening, but the very nice Indian family they had befriended were starting to slowly inch away, keeping a safe distance from what appeared to be a very crazy man.

A long story short and 1 centimeter more dilated, I was engrossed with his travel tales. I didn't really want to go see if the "waves" were turning into "tsunamis" next door. What could they possibly offer that was more to my liking? I clearly wanted to know what was happening to the flaming ball sac!  

So, hours later at the hospital (India not Salt Lake), the burning fire turned to ice cold chills and as this nameless friend got up to use the restroom, he snapped into reality and couldn't for the life of him pinpoint why he was in a grimy Indian hospital with mice crawling in and out of the garbage cans. No recollection at all.

Had I not been delirious and starving I would have stayed all night to deliver their baby, that is how much I loved them. It is always flattering when the patients and their entire family whine and sob when it is time for you to head home. That is when you know you are doing something right. I could see that I had made them feel comfortable just by merely talking about things that were uncomfortable. They clearly didn't know what they were doing having a baby just as I was simultaneously unsure of why I didn't major in journalism. 

And just as love sneakily winds its way into your heart, without expecting it or wanting it, I noticed how much I enjoy my job. It just snuck up on me...at a time when I absolutely didn't see it coming. As I passed them on to the night nurse I told her I would break her arm if something were to go wrong with this delivery. "Guard them as if they were your own", I said, gazing into her eyes as if I meant serious business.

I was beaming as I skipped out of the building. My doubts began to fade, as they often do, when I mine the diamonds in the rough; when I connect on a level much deeper than riding the waves of labor. I sailed a tide of a much more important regatta today and decided to set aside my plans for a major career shift. At least until tomorrow, when the gaze of the moon is only slightly askew.