There are a lot of things about being a doctor that I don’t like, but being caught in a moment like this one is something so surreal, I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Thursday was clustered chaos. It was mayhem in casualty which seemed to overflow into theatre. Red and orange patients, caesareans for fetal distress, ruptured ectopics and then first onset seizures which escalated into cardio-respiratory arrest.
45 minutes later, despite getting a pulse back, the damage to her heart and her brain was just too much and so she breathed her last.
Before I had really finished talking to the family I was called up to theatre for a fetal distress caesarean section.
There was nothing eventful about the delivery. The little boy came out kicking and screaming which is what we prefer them to do.
While I stood there examining him it struck me, that I had watched life end not even 10 minutes before and here I was now, watching it begin.
There are a lot of things about being a doctor that I don’t like, but there are moments that make up for it. They are fewer, I’ll admit but I don’t walk away because of the six bad days in a week, I keep going back because of that one good one.
