The Blog I'm Not Writing

Department Of This Says It All…
( Or, At Least It, Says A Lot. )

That would be the  50 Completely True Things post by Mo Husseini.

Somehow, reading moiself’s  thoughts as voiced by a Palestinian gives them more chutzpah (ahem).  I don’t know who this guy is, but Mo, you’re my bro.

Intro:

“This is a repost of a list of posts I made to Threads last fall.
I am a Palestinian-American who is tired of stupid people.
I wanted to share a (not exhaustive) list of 50 useful and indisputable facts on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.”   [1]

In particular, Fact 39 nails it – and re the war in Gaza, all else is irrelevant.

Fact 39
“Stop with the fucking history lessons about what the Israelites did, or what the Ottomans did, or what the British did, or whatever. IT  IS  FUCKING  IMMATERIAL. There is a pile of dog shit in the living room. Instead of arguing about whose dog took the bigger shit in the living room, maybe focus on how we clean up the dog shit, and maybe we keep the dogs outside.”

 

 

However, IMO, Husseini’s Fact 50 disputably does not merit the adjective indisputable.  The only non-resolvable dispute in the world is seemingly *not* which group of people have the more compelling rights to claim whatever territory, but which country/culture deserves the credit for inventing hummus.   [2]

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Department Of Mother’s Day, Schmother’s Day – Craft A Card
For *This* Holiday, Hallmark

This weekend, instead of choosing to acknowledge that most commercially co-opted sentimental of holidays, moiself  will instead celebrate that genetic inheritance we all have – Mitochondrial DNA   [3]  ( mtDNA ) – which we get only from our mothers:

 

 

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Department Of A Different Kind Of Mother’s Day Story
Sub-Department Of A Story Both Profoundly Sad Yet Profoundly Reassuring
( at least to moiself  )    [4]

Another in the installment of stories from my years working at the OB-GYN practice of Dr.  DWB (“Dr. B”) and Nurse Practitioner POM, in the late 1980s, near Stanford Hospital.

Background information for this installment, which is a bad baby story:  Among a group of OBs I knew back then, there was a (fortunately little-used) term, “bad baby.”  This term was not used to refer to babies who didn’t fetch or sit or rollover, or who had colic or behavioral issues.

 

 

Obstetricians (and some nurses) used the term bad baby   [5]   to refer to the phenomenon of what “should have been” a stillbirth –  a newborn who just a few years earlier would have been declared DOA – and/or a newborn whose acute congenital morbidities, heretofore unknown by the parents or medical staff, meant that it would die soon after birth…except for the pediatrician who swooped down and performed drastic resuscitations and interventions (often against the wishes of the obstetrician and even the parents), which “revived’ the infant long enough for it to be placed on respirators, cardiac assist devices, etc.  Once revived, the essentially brain-dead infant could be temporarily kept breathing and with a beating heart.  And so the pediatrician got praise from certain people, who didn’t know that the seemingly miraculous interventions he   [6]   performed were, quality-of-life-wise, for naught, as the infant, with minimal brain stem activity, would now die in a few hours or days or weeks, instead of at or shortly after birth.

As devastating as these situations were for the baby’s’ parents, they were also heartrending for the obstetricians and nurses.

Fortunately, most of the pregnancies and deliveries our practice saw –  the majority of  pregnancies and deliveries for most women – were relatively uneventful, with happy outcomes.  Bad baby cases were uncommon. Nevertheless, one particularly memorable bb incident occurred when Dr. B and POM were on vacation.  Speaking of which….

 

 

Indisputable Fact #51: Like any working human being, doctors have to take a vacation, at some time.  And no matter when a doctor goes on vacation, it will never be a good time for all of the doctor’s patients.

Dr. B’s and POM’s patients were particularly loyal to the practice. Once a patient had had her first prenatal care and delivery via POM/DWB’s practice she always returned to us for care if she had another baby   [7]    (unless she had to relocate; e.g. for a job transfer).  New patients searching for an OB often called Dr. B’s practice to get information before scheduling a meet-n-greet appointment with POM and DWB, and a common question they asked the staff    [8]  was, “My due date is (____) – can you look at the schedule and tell me if the doctor is going on vacation during that week?”

Moiself  couldn’t actually, or accurately, do that.  And I told them so, and why:  Dr. B’s vacation schedule tended to be erratic – we rarely if ever had a time blocked off in the scheduling books for, say, seven months in the future when he would definitely be gone (and there wasn’t time when he always went on an annual family fishing trip, or whatever).  Also, due dates are informed-but-nonetheless guestimates; there are no guarantees when it comes to when babies arrive.

Dr. B tended not to take more than a week’s vacation at a time, and rarely missed his patients’ deliveries.  Once, in the course of one of the rare intervals when he took a two week holiday, he had *five* patients whose due dates were during his vacation.  Not one of them delivered.  Another once, when Dr. B took a vacation weekend – not a long weekend, just a regular weekend – his on-call group delivered three of Dr. B’s patients, none of whom were due to deliver during the two days he was out of town.   [9]  

Yet again, I digress. 

 

 

The particularly memorable bad baby case to which I refer occurred when Dr. B and POM were on vacation.  Patient MM, who was not due to deliver for another two weeks, went into labor one weekday evening.  It was a quick labor and birth, as second deliveries can sometimes be (Dr. B had delivered MM’s and her husband’s first child, “Sam,” five years earlier).  MM’s baby, another boy whom she told us she would name “Matthew,” was delivered by an OB in Dr. B’s on call group.  The next morning, when that doctor called to give us the news (our practice remained fully or partially staffed when Dr. B was out of town), I knew something was wrong the moment I heard his hello.

It was a bad baby.  Awwwwww…ooooohhhhhh…….crap.

I walked over to Stanford Hospital to see MM, who was in the maternity ward.  Dr. B was out of state; there was nothing he could do; I thought at least a friendly/familiar face from the practice might be of some help during this distressing time for MM and her family.  I first checked in with “Anika,” the nurse in charge of MM’s care.  Anika had been a NICU nurse for many years and was now a labor and delivery nurse.  As we I walked up and down the hallway outside of MM’s room (a private room, thankfully   [10]  ) Anika gave me the details of the situation (this was years before HIPA).  Anika said she was glad  to see me – MM’s husband had taken Sam down to the hospital cafeteria to get lunch, and she thought MM would welcome my visit.  The parents were in the process of deciding what to do: baby Matthew could not live long if removed from life support, but even with it, he was experiencing systemic organ failure.  He might live a few hours or even days longer, but his death was inevitable.  Anika had seen such cases before, and was hoping MM and her husband would ask for her advice, but they hadn’t yet, and she of course wasn’t going to give it unless asked.

I remember the glistening, anguished compassion in Anika’s eyes, which contrasted with her professional demeanor.  Despite the latter, I noticed that she wrung her hands as she told me what she’d experienced in her years in the field.  She’d never seen parents regret taking their “bad baby beloved infant off all the tubes and machines and holding their baby until it passed peacefully, in their arms; she had seen the parents who were devasted with regret – painful beyond description – the ones who’d insisted the doctors do “everything possible” and then their baby died anyway, in the sterile incubator, all tubed and hooked up, looking more machine than human.  But, whatever their decision was, Anika stressed, it was their decision….

I thanked Anika for her kindness, and knocked on MM’s door.  MM lit up when she saw me; she reached her quavering arms out and enveloped me in a hug.  We had a long, heartfelt conversation, with me mostly listening as MM tried to make sense of her world being turned upside down.  MM was trying to conjure up any outcome for Matthew other than the inevitable (Anika had warned me that MM wouldn’t even say the word death, or die, or dying, or passing, or anything related to mortality).   [11]   Although MM was physically in good post-partum health she was in no emotional state to leave the hospital, and the ward nurses had advised that she stay for at least another night.  At MM’s request I promised to return the next morning to see her.

The next day I returned to the maternity ward around the same time (late morning).  MM was not in her room.  I found Anika, who told me what had happened.  After I’d left the previous afternoon, MM’s son Sam and MM’s husband had returned from their lunch break.  Early that evening Sam played with his Care Bears and Legos in the corner of MM’s room while MM and her husband consulted with members of NICU team, with Anika present (as per the family’s wishes).

After the NICU doctors and nurses left the room, Sam asked what was going on with his new baby brother?  He listened while his parents tried to dance around the situation, then he crawled up onto his mother’s hospital bed.  The tender bluntness of his question brought reality crashing down. 

“Is Matthew going to die?”

“Yes.”

Anika said MM looked almost startled at the sound of her own voice, as if she were realizing that sad fact for the first time.

“Yes, honey, Matthew is going to die.”

Sam and looked up at this father’s tear-stained face.  Sam’s dad nodded, and placed his hands on his son’s shoulders.

“Oh.”  Sam took a deep breath.  “Then, can we hold him?”

 

 

Sam and his parents got to hold and kiss Matthew, and speak to him of their love for him, for almost an hour until he died peacefully in their arms.

I thanked Anika for her compassionate care of MM’s family, and managed to keep it together long enough to take the stairs down to the lobby and exit the hospital before I sob-gasped my way through the parking lot and back to the office.

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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week     [12]

“I have to be able to say that I disagree with your religion, regardless of whether you get offended by it.  The thing that you have staked your life on and built your hopes and dreams around is a fraud.  It’s not true.  God will not cast you into eternal damnation if you wear garments of two different cloths.  You are not committing an abomination against the Creator of the Universe if you eat shrimp.  I love you, but what you believe is not only wrong, but nearly insane.

Now, we will run into the argument of…’but a lot of people don’t believe in it literally.’ Good for them, they realize you shouldn’t murder your son because he cursed at you.  Bravo.  But then, why should you believe the book at all?  If it is riddled with nonsense, complete irrationality and fairytales, perhaps you should pick another book to put your faith in.  I bet The Lord of the Rings has a better moral story to tell without as much rational nonsense.” 

 ( Cenk Uygur, Turkish-American attorney, political commentator, media host, co-creator of The Young Turks, a sociopolitical news and commentary program.  Excerpts, my emphases, from Uygur’s  “Love the Religious, Hate the religion” April 2, 2007, Daily KOS )

  

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Parting Shot:  I love it when/I hate it when…

I love it *and* I hate it when I make moiself  cry when I’m typing, and realize, It’s just something you’re typing in your blog, FFS.

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May you literally or metaphorically keep the dogs outside
( or at least don’t let them shit in the living room );
May you hold a soft spot in your heart for those who’ve had a bad baby;
May you take a moment to celebrate the fact that hummus exists;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

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[1] Well, his last fact might be debatable, as there are several cultures/countries who’d like to claim credit for that.

[2] Now y’all have to go to the list and read Fact 50, right?

[3] Mitochondrial DNA is the circular chromosome found inside…wait for it…mitochondria, which are structures within a cell that are analogous to organs in the body, in that they have one or more specific jobs to perform in the cell (mitochondria are the site of the cell’s energy production and other metabolic functions). Mitochondrial DNA  is passed from mother to offspring in humans and most multicellular organisms; thus, both males and females have mitochondrial DNA, but fathers don’t pass on their mitochondrial DNA because the sperm’s mitochondria  are destroyed when the sperm fuses with the egg.

[4] Actually, no footnote here.  Thought y’all could use a break before reading further.

[5] I don’t know if it’s still in use; it was certainly not standard medical nomenclature; rather, it was, moiself observed, a way for doctors to slang-name a situation which was depressing for all involved.

[6] All of the bad baby cases I saw during my 5+ years with the practice involved male pediatricians (no gender slur or disparity implied; most of the pediatricians at that time were male).

[7] Not only that, when he delivered a baby for an OB in his on-call group, who was either out of town or in surgery or who for some reason had to miss the delivery  (which is why OBs have on-call groups)  he was notorious for what the on-call group doctors groused about as “stealing” that patient.  Translation: the patient, of her own free will, would transfer her care to our practice when she was next pregnant (and sometimes well before that).  It’s not that the other doctors were bad, it was that we – the entire practice, as well as Dr. B – were so good.

[8] This was a question that they asked of other OBs as well, when they were searching for care.

[9] Each of those patients birthed their babies from one to three weeks earlier than their respective due dates.

[10] Sometimes due to hospital crowding or insurance or other issues, mothers who’d given birth to a bad baby had to share a room with a mother who’d just delivered a healthy baby…which was, IMO opinion, beyond cruel.

[11] It had been a completely normal, “uneventful” pregnancy, with no indication from any exam or test that anything was wrong.

[12] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists.  No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.”  Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org