OB Specialist? My Crazy Week Continues

Wow if I thought my week was crazy by Tues I had no idea just how much fun was still awaiting me!

Nearly fifty people wound up completing the First Aid and CPR course! One of the team members from the Salem, OR team wound up creating a bunch of computer programs for the clinic. I was in heaven with the all of the formulas he programmed into Excel for me. The programs and spreadsheets he put together are going to save our staff hours and hours. Now we just have to get the staff computer literate! I'm hoping we can start computer courses next week with them.

Our measles campaign wrapped up on Wed afternoon with more than 250 children receiving a measles booster and vitamin A dose.

Monday night I started four days of being on call. Now I have to tell you that in August we only had two night cases for the entire month. So I figured I'd be able to handle being on call, while doing my normal clinic duties, while helping host a team, while assisting running a training AND a measles campaign. Let me tell you, I think it must have been a moment of insanity in which I made this decision. But our veteran nurse is on vacation and our brand-new-nurse is on orientation so I didn't think it was at all fair to start her on call in her first week.

Well I wound up with at least one case every night. Some nights were more than one. And I should tell you that in a typical month we deliver between 2 and 6 babies in our clinic. That is for a month okay? Well in less than one week we have had five deliveries!!! What is up with that? At one point this week I made the comment that someone must have put something in the water supply to make all of these women go into labor. Wednesday night's call brought a perfect delivery with a few of the Salem team members assisting me. Oh, I should mention that this delivery took place in the dark using flashlights and head-lamps since the power was out. Yesterday after we had diagnosed a false labor and referred a pre-term labor to a hospital I said that I feel like an OB resident with an additional day job!

After saying goodbye to the team late last night I figured it was my last night on-call for this week and I had already had at least one call every night. What were the chances of really getting called in again? Well 30 minutes after my head hit the pillow (I'm not convinced I had actually hit an actual state of sleep) we got a knock on the door that there was a case at the clinic. It turned out to be.............you guessed it, a delivery!

The woman was about half-way into her labor. I set up for the delivery and was seriously considering heading back to bed and telling them to get me when her water broke or she felt like pushing. But then a vehicle pulled up from the Children's Home with an emergency asthma case. After about an hour I had the child stabilized and headed home so I went back to check on the laboring mama. Well at that point I realized that the two ladies with her did not have a lot of delivery experience apart from their own deliveries of their children. Sometimes women bring a traditional midwife to the clinic with them to assist the nurse (which is always great!) but this was not the case. These ladies were very concerned that it was almost time. After a quick check I realized it was not almost time but that if I went home they were going to be calling me every thirty minutes thinking it was time.

At some point during the night I confess I got a bit impatient and so I started her on a Pitocin drip. I had a terrible time finding a vein to start a line but got lucky with a blind AC stick (for my medical friends out there!). She finally delivered around 6 in the morning. This was my first delivery completely solo. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe this was the reason I had had so many OB cases this week. It was all a warm-up leading to last night. At each previous delivery I had either another nurse or a paramedic from the team on hand. This one I just had two ladies supporting the mom. She delivered a healthy baby girl. Unfortunately she tore pretty badly and I wound up calling in our new nurse to help me close the three-layer tear. And praise God this baby didn't need an resuscitation!

I finally dragged myself home at 7:30 this morning. Thankfully I have a full week before I go on call again. And even more thankfully I think I might be able to actually rest this weekend! When looking at my calendar I realized that this is the last weekend until mid-December that we don't have a team, visitors or some event or meeting going on. So I better rest well.

Oh and as a sad side-note our baby calf Bonita died this morning. I've had so much on my plate that I've been in denial all week that she was sick. I'm still processing that my sweet baby heifer is gone.

I'm not making any summary comments about this week yet because it is not quite over. But I will say I'm hoping for a weekend of down-time!