Of course I remember her...
It must have been a little bit more than a year ago when I was doing obstetrics. A call day when the queue of patients outside triage in labour ward was halfway to the exit.
She climbed onto the bed and told me her story...
I remember she was young; maybe 22, and pregnant with twins. She was a pretty girl and one of those lovely, chatty girls who despite the fact that she had been sitting and waiting for about 3 hours was not at all unpleasant about it.
She was about half way with the pregnancy, maybe 23 or 24 weeks. She was complaining not so much about pain actually, as about a little bit of bleeding.
So I examined her and wasn't expecting to find much (a little bit of blood is not uncommon in pregnancy) What I distinctly remember are those bulging membranes and a heavy feeling in my stomach with the realisation that the situation was far worse than it appeared. It's true, a little bit of blood is not uncommon, but every now and then it heralds something ominous.
It was what we would call an inevitable miscarriage...past the point of no return.
I remember watching her world and her family's world crumble in a few seconds. I remember having to explain over and over again that the babies would be too small to survive and there was nothing we could do to stop them from coming. I remember the first one being delivered, a tiny, perfect little person, probably weighing about 4oograms, with a heart beat and 10 fingers and toes and jelly-skin. I remember wrapping him up and showing him too his granny and him quietly just slipping away.
I remember the sadness of the whole situation and the reminder of how quickly a world can be turned upside down.
You can imagine my surprise when the case that I took over from the on call anaethetist yesterday morning is this same woman. When we were finishing up she looks up and says
"I remember your face! You and the midwife delivered my twins last year..."
Of course I had to think a bit...delivering twins with a midwife is definately something that I should remember. And then the whole day and all it's pictures came rushing back.
"Of course, the little boys who were too small" and she nodded her head.
You'll be happy to know (aside from the fact that she was in the obstetrics theatre having a third degree tear repair done) that she was back because she had had another baby. A little girl weighing 3kg's and healthy.
It's no secret that this is a profession where happy stories are heard of but not common.
So you collect them up and store them away for the days when you need a bit of gentle encouragement to go back for another 24 hour shift.
