Mrs. X

Mrs. X, as we call them. Ten days after a totally uneventful caesarean, came rushing back to the hospital with a bout of severe bleeding. We went about our regular sequential process of trying to stop the bleeding; but spurt by spurt, clot by clot, as her body arrogantly ignored our efforts. Eventually her blood looked like it was mixed in a bottle of water, unfit for all life-sustaining processes. Unmindful of all the tubes, pipes, liquids, drugs and drips we connected to the woman, the red juice was drained from her veins, leaving her lifeless. Healthy skin, delicate features, lean body, just as it was when she was still alive, and yet she wasn't.  

All that's left of her now is a case sheet, meant to serve us for medicolegal purposes.  But is that all it is? When you turn the pages of this book, you can see her entire hospital admission story... So similar to everyone else's, until it wasn't. 

Almost the entire hospital's staff had come in contact with this patient from the time she'd entered it for safe confinement, until her ultimate death. 

Her monthly visits-- I recognise the handwriting, of my friend, another coworker, another senior who had done her checkups and advised investigations. I can almost hear my friend explaining the patient that she had to be admitted now for a caesarean that would be done the next day. I can see the woman dressed in her OT gown on the dawn of her section, wearing two braids and looking unrecognisable from the herd of list cases. 

After her operation and post-op care, I can see my junior counseling her about suture removal and further follow ups, sending her home with the quickly scribbled discharge card that I now hold in my hand. 

And what would each one of those people have to say to her, if they knew that she'd be back like this? To die in our hospital, for no fault of her own, or of ours. To leave two little children motherless, her husband alone to raise them... 

I wanted to write about the things that move me, and when there was no material, I felt quite upset to realise that nothing moves me anymore. But how can anything else get to me when this is what I get to intervene and prevent on a daily basis? There's nothing more important to me than this job. And there's nothing more humbling than to see what happens when it all goes beyond control. It's a miracle that our reach has extended so far in the past few years, and saved so many young and beautiful new mums. There's nothing I'd be luckier to call myself; an ObGyn.