C-Sections and a Political Rant

 Yeah, so here's a photo of my peach tree. I post it to show you both how nice it looked a couple days ago and to lament the loss of such marvelous buds as the last couple freezing nights have taken the flowers away. I am sure that by tomorrow, they will be little more than shriveled blobs on a bare tree.

In other news, today I got to see a c-section on the labor and delivery ward. I am taking an elective in anesthesiology where we get to go around and observe different anesthesiologists in action. My turn in the OB started with a meeting in the break room where we all huddled around the white board where all the patients were listed. The Dr. that was heading our group (let's call her Dr. LaGrange) gave us a brief overview on the current OB situation. You'd think that it would be pretty boring; it was anything but. One of the patients apparently belongs to a religion that believes in the refusal of all medical treatment. Well, this wouldn't normally be a problem, except that this lady was "severely preeclamptic" at 38 weeks of pregnancy. While I am not sure of all the symptoms, her heart rate was over 200/130 (yeah, that's a 130 diastolic pressure--not good). If that baby doesn't come within the next couple hours, she will probably die. She has signed an order to forgo any medical treatment to resuscitate her and ordered the same for the baby. If you are like me, you are probably wondering why this lady ever checked herself into the hospital in the first place. If you are going to refuse all medical treatment, then just have the baby at home with a midwife or something. But then as we talked more about the case and how unfair it all seemed to the child, Dr. LaGrange brought up the fact that it was Georgia law to protect the life of the child, even if the mother desires otherwise. I think this lady came in because she knows she is in pretty bad shape. She knows that she can deny herself medical treatment, but can't do so for her unborn child. This way, in the back of her mind, she has a way out of the guilt associated with killing her child. "Well, I told them not to, but they went ahead and saved my child's life, which is what I wanted anyway." I sincerely hope that some kind of a miracle happened and she already had that baby. And then there is the question of what to do in those states who don't have laws regarding the child in this case. I think I would throw the parents wishes aside and save the baby. So sue me.

I just realized that this will be a long blog entry. Sorry. The c-section was cool. You wouldn't believe how white the fat is when you cut into the belly. It was glistening and pearly, bleached white. I was also surprised how little blood there is with that initial incision. Of course when you get deeper down and start cutting the abdominal muscles there is quite a bit more blood, but still, most c-sections are done without a blood transfusion. This impressed me after I learned that the heart sends about a fifth of your blood to the uterus in a minute--meaning they have to work fast. While we "helping" to set up for the procedure, Dr. LaGrange was working with one of her residents. He seemed nice enough, but Dr. LaGrange was treating him like crap. I felt bad for the dude, as it seemed he could do nothing right. Every little thing he did seemed to annoy Dr. LaGrange and she let him know it. I couldn't believe the way she was talking down to him, as though he was a 7-year old child. Dr. LaGrange was really nice to all of us in the class, but it kind of scared me that maybe that is how all attendings treat residents. I really hope that is not the case, but I'll be sure to let you all know in a couple years.

So, back to the c-section. It was really cool to see the baby pop out of the uterus. It was so bizarre to see something so human come out of a large gaping hole in a woman's abdomen. Seeing it in real life was quite the experience and I was glad to be a small part of it (albeit a very small part--I injected some drug into the lady that was supposedly 80x more potent than morphine). Oh, and one of my classmates totally passed out during the procedure. We were standing on these little footstools against the wall observing, when all of the sudden she crashed to the ground, bumping her head as she landed. To her credit, it wasn't because of anything she couldn't handle (it was towards the end when she passed out, during a rather boring part), but rather that she had locked her legs for a good while and blood wasn't reaching her head.

Oh, and Before I end this one, I wanted to make a small political rant. I don't believe so much in democracy in this country. Well, I believe in democracy, just that I don't think what we do is democracy. Politicians pick who they are gonna have run for president in the primaries. They pick from amongst themselves. In the end, when we head to the polls to pick a president, we are picking from two different people, who were picked out by politicians. Sure, we have a choice, but I don't feel my vote counts because the people who I want to vote for, who have the same ideals as myself, aren't one of those two running for president. Yeah, I voted for Bush in the last election, but I really don't know why. Yeah, he was the lesser of two evils, but is that what democracy is supposed to be? I thought it was voting for that which makes sense to me. Voting for what I want, not voting for the person who has offers the least bad stuff. I'd much rather vote for someone who has the most good stuff. In the next election when I have to chose between Hilary and Gulianni, I won't really want either of them.