Thursday, March 15, 2007

Catching up

I forgot to blog about two births before my weekend off but you know what, I didn't forget. They were harder; in different ways. One, the woman was high maintenance and bitchy and took labour out on us instead of her husband like one is supposed to. The second, couldn't push her baby out because she was exhausted and couldn't feel due to an epidural. Sigh.
I don't feel well today but here are some snippets of interest.
My cat Gussy died. A while ago actually but I failed to blog about it. I love him and he was a good cat. He is sitting in a box in our freezer until it is warm enough to bury him in the woods in our backyard. But please, don't be detoured from eating BBQ at our house.
I booked a flight to Paris. Yea, for my last summer I am gonna do the cliche Euro trip but I am only going for a couple of weeks with Katie my old housemate. I will be focussing on France and Germany and maybe make some jaunts to other places too.
That's me right now :)

Friday, March 02, 2007

Blizzards!!!!!!!!!

I caught another baby!!! This time I pretty much did it on my own.
So, I get called to a birth in Cobourg around 4. The hospital is 93 km from my house and perhaps you are familiar with yesterdays weather. Well, in total, the drive took me about1 hr 45 min. On the country highways my speed averaged 35km (normally 100kph on a nice day). It was the kinda drive where you can't tell the road from the sky and you pray to god you don't drive into the ditch. Then the 401. I thought this part would be nicer, more cars, more snow mushed out of the way but no. More cars yes, but the fallen snow had been sealed by frozen rain so snow/ice was not moving and actually provided a lot of resistance against my tires. I had little traction, no tracks to follow, could not see the lines, could not maintain control of my car going faster than 60kph so I went nice and slow but did big 18 wheeler trucks like that? Of course not, they would pass me and it felt like they were inches away from me and as they did I would just swear to the power of a million. I was so scared and could you imagine if I didn't have nice snow tires?
Ok, so I made it there. I didn't even care if I had missed her birth but fortunately I hadn't.
She laboured beautifully, breathed deeply, didn't mind me bugging her to listen to baby's heart every 15 minutes. Her husband had brought a laptop so we all together watched episodes of HOUSE. I provided her some labour support but she didn't really need it. She had an IV so I kept replacing bags and I inserted gravol IV for her nausea and vomiting. I drew up some other drugs and lucky me, cut myself on the nice glass vials the oxytocin comes in (we have to snap glass tops off). Un-opened alcohol swabs work well as a sheild but I was neglectful of my thumb and didn't use one.
So, around 10:40 she was ready to push. I had already set up the instruments in a sterile field and put my gloves on. I assumed position, providing a little resistance against the baby's head as she was pushed out. This helps minimize tears of the perineal tissue. Head was born, checked for cord around neck. Shoulders born nicely, I guided baby out and but on mom's tummy where she soon started crying. I helped stimulate to get her breathing and crying. I clamped and cut the cord and delivered the placenta with the help of my preceptor guiding how much force to put on the cord. I did other bits and pieces too. I did the newborn exam all by myself with supervision and gave babe her vitamin K shot and eye ointment.
I am really happy that regardless of little opportunities in terms of numbers, I have experienced a sharp learning curve and at every birth and clinic day I seem to be doing more and more and I love it. Things don't scare me anymore, I am just ready. I have yet to do a PAP and those are hard to get opportunities to do. I mean, who wants to be someone's first PAP? In clinic now I am pretty much conducting visits, I have drawn blood again, but no more opps. for vag. exams. It will come. Just letting you know that I am happy, loving it (when I am actually working at it rather than waiting to be paged) and my thumb is just a little sore.
Take care everyone and see you at the Freeway a week from Sunday!