I almost died. Ok, that’s a bit of an overreaction (which if
you know me, you know that I almost NEVER overreact!) As periodically happens over here, weird skin
eruptions will occur on our bodies, causing us to ask ourselves (and usually consult
others)….”is this a mango fly (a worm that imbeds in the skin) or a boil?” Well, I woke up one morning with such an eruption
and decided I’d start taking antibiotics sooner rather than later. I had some Bactrim, so I decided to start
it. Last year I’d taken Bactrim and
suspected I had some kind of allergic reaction. My mouth broke out in all these
blisters and I couldn’t really eat for 2 or 3 days. A similar, milder thing had
happened to me before but I couldn’t remember if I had been taking Bactrim at
the time. When I was home I talked to my
doctor about it but he didn’t think it really sounded like an allergic
reaction. Awesome! ( I’ll admit I was
always a little too proud about the fact that I could mark “no allergies” and “taking
no medicines “ on any medical form I had to fill out). Oh how the proud will fall.
I was working Sunday morning so took my first Bactrim before
I headed down to work. About 30 min
after getting to work I was reading my book when I noticed that my gums started
tingling. Why in the world are my gums
tingling? Then I remembered. I’d taken the Bactrim. Could that be it???? I decided to just wait and see what happened,
and as I waited, my whole mouth started tingling. Then I started feeling this ball in the back
of my throat that kept getting bigger.
My tongue started swelling a little and I started having a little tightness in my chest with a little cough. Shoot.
I didn’t know what else it could be except a stupid reaction to the
Bactrim so I went home and took some Benadryl.
I was super antsy and couldn’t sit down.
I kept thinking of the patients I’d seen in the ER that came in with
anaphylactic reactions. I did NOT want to
be one of those patients!! I talked
about it with a couple of my nurse friends who assured me they could give me a
shot of epinephrine if I needed it and that I would probably be fine. (There’s a chance I have a tendency to
overreact….especially when I’m 3 hours away from a doctor, and thousands of
miles away from someone who could intubate me).
My symptoms slowly resolved and I left my visiting nurse
friend down at the hospital to keep an eye on things while I went up to the
house to make us some lunch. A few
minutes after getting there I got a call in whence my friend said…..”Umm….you
should get back down here.” That's the kind of sentence that makes your stomach drop a little.
I got back down to the hospital and met a very pregnant,
relatively unresponsive woman. Her blood
pressure was really high and the nurse that took her vitals said that she was “twitching”
while he took her blood pressure. I
asked her family how many months along she was, and they said 9. I asked if she was in labor and nobody said
anything. Ok? I heard one of the women say that this “sickness”
had been bothering her for about 3 days.
Ok. I had a couple different things going through my
head. Her blood pressure was really
high. Was this eclampsia? Had she been seizing at home? She also had a fever, so I was thinking it
could be cerebral malaria. She was
COMPLETELY uncooperative. I tried to
start an IV and she freaked out. Three
of us had to basically sit on her to allow the lab to prick her finger. When I
gave her the injection of anti-malarial medicine, I thought the needle was going
to break off in her leg, she was moving around so much. Oh. And she fell off the bed. Off. The. Bed. I couldn’t
tell if she was being overly dramatic or if there was something going on with
her neurologically.
Because she was so wild, I couldn’t tell if she was in labor
or not. Initially I didn’t think she was….I just thought they’d brought her in
because of another illness. But after we stopped torturing her, I began to
notice that she seemed to freak out in a somewhat regular pattern. When she said she wanted to have a bowel
movement that sealed it. I needed to do a vaginal exam and see where we
were.
As I inserted my fingers, I immediately felt a head. Holy
cow this woman was ready to push!! Only
she wouldn’t push. At all. She did a lot of yelling, but no pushing. I found the vacuum and wrestled with her to
get it attached to the baby’s head. As
the contractions came, so did the baby.
Just like that. Crying and
everything. But it was tiny! (Just over 3 pounds I found out later). It took me about 2 seconds to look at the
baby and her belly and realize that there was another one in there. That’s
when I had my “Oh C.R.A.P.” moment This was my
first delivery since I’d gone home in November and my first time delivering
twins……EVER!!!!!!!!!!
I reached up in there and could feel the bulging
membranes around the second baby. I used my handy dandy
fingernail to rupture them. As I did, a
MOUNTAIN of fluid rushed out and I was drenched!!! My first thought was “I can’t
just jump away because I need to guide the head down so the cord doesn’t come
down first.” My immediate second thought was “well, if this woman had Ebola
(don’t know if you’ve heard about the outbreak over here) which is transmitted
via body fluids……I’m in BIG trouble!”
I reached up and felt a head. Yea!!!
With a hand. Not so “Yea.” When I ruptured the membranes, there was a
thick meconium stain. This means that the baby is in trouble. I did a
rapid thought process in my head. The
first baby was small. This one probably is too.
But there’s the hand. Can the baby’s head fit through with the hand? It’s
not the woman’s first child which means there’s more space down there, but
still. I’VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE!!!! And then there was the meconium stain.
The baby was in trouble. We didn't have a lot of time. The woman wasn’t
cooperating which meant she wasn’t pushing, which meant she wasn’t going to be
much help.
I asked my friend to grab my phone out of my pocket and dial
one of the midwives who lived close-by.
I wanted her to at least be on the way in case I got into trouble. As
soon as I hung up the phone my patient had a contraction and we pulled the
second baby out. He came out
screaming. He was a little bigger at
about 3 ½ pounds. Nothing like the
screaming cries of two bouncing baby boys!
As I was delivering the placenta and cleaning her up, one of the
relatives said, “Yes, someone mentioned that it was two babies.” Huh. That might have been nice to know at the
beginning. J
Oh Salone.
I was going in and out of the labor room, getting different
medicines and I heard one woman telling another….”this woman (meaning me) has done well! She really knows
this work!” I had to stop her right there
and say…..NO!!! This was my FIRST time doing this. I don’t know anything! It
was GOD that helped us today! J And it was. Just another day in Salone.......
