musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Your date is better in your pie and porridge than in your cheek


When I was young, everybody except my friends were old. There were gradations of course, but with anybody over 18, I could only guess the number of years they wore. And even then, it was kind of a binary choice: they were either adults, or simply old like, say, my grandparents. Old people were in a class by themselves: a wrinkled, slow-moving Magisterium that merely gave advice but seldom orders to the adults.

Now that I’m old, however, I’ve come to see things a bit differently. Although I often have increased needs, I am largely opaque to those around me – I have become merely a background. It often comes as a surprise therefore, that whenever I walk on the edge of the road or along the trails in the nearby woods, passing strangers smile at me as if they know who I am. Perhaps they recognize me, but that is worrisome: even if I do not know them, I feel compelled to smile back as if I could produce their name if asked. Is that a sign of anything I wonder?

Of course, my smile is a long-ingrained habit; women with increasingly older children at their sides who I apparently delivered in my pre-dotage life as an obstetrician, expect that I remember them as well as they do me. I have no recourse but to smile at them as if they weren’t the strangers they’ve become; as if I still recognize the now-clothed teenager standing beside them. But I simply cannot remember each child I last saw emerging, naked and screaming, from their mother’s nether regions.

A smile doesn’t take much practice, however; it’s more the conversation with the stranger who claims that they know me; it’s the expectation of a common memory which is a problem.

I met a woman and her dog on a trail the other day. The dog looked familiar; the woman did not, although she smiled as if she did. The dog wagged its tail to show that we, at least, shared a previous encounter in common, but the woman just stood there, wagging nothing that I could see and making no effort to move away; it was clearly a standoff.

When the silence between us became uncomfortable, I reached down to pet the dog, and perhaps this was what emboldened her to use my long-forgotten honorific as a goad. “My daughter is 23 now, doctor…” Her use of an ellipsis spelled trouble. “She was a breech, remember?”

I stood up from patting the dog and tried out a new smile: an almost-remembering smile; it wasn’t convincing enough for her, though. It was almost as if I might have picked out the wrong suspect in a police lineup, and she needed to correct me before it was too late.

“Middle of the night, and you were in an adjacent room delivering somebody else…”

The ellipsis again; I felt like pointing that out to her, for some reason. I also wanted to tell her that the scenario she was describing was not unusual for the on-call obstetrician in a busy downtown hospital. But, I was one of the only ones who was comfortable delivering a breech infant vaginally if there were no other complicating issues. Maybe she knew that.

“My nurse told me I was really lucky that you were the one on call that night…”

More clues; I think she was teasing me; I was beginning to enjoy this. “So…2024 minus 23  years means 2001…” I thought I’d see how she felt when slapped with a couple of ellipses.

“February,” she offered, but whether to be helpful, or just to continue the game I wasn’t sure. “You were complaining about the weather I remember, and how upset you were at not being able to get away to some place warm.

“But you were really very nice for 3:30 in the morning, I thought. You came running in from the room next door, put on a clean mask, some sterile gloves and that funny paper cap thing you doctors wear, and headed straight for my… my parts. You call it by a different name, but you get the picture.” The woman actually blushed and the dog, sensing a subtle change lay down at her feet.

“I mean it was my fourth pregnancy -no, fifth because I’d had a miscarriage somewhere along the line. Anyway, my labours were usually quick, but that one seemed different -longer… And my baby’s bottom was pointing the wrong way: towards the floor or the ceiling… I forget now. Anyway, you rotated her bum and her back with your fingers, and plop, out she came. All eight and a half pounds of her.” She smiled at the obviously pleasant recollection and looked down at her dog.

“Debra is pregnant now…”

I smiled and nodded. I was about to congratulate her on her grandmotherhood, when she quickly put a hand on my arm to reassure me.

“She wanted to see you for this pregnancy, but you’d already retired.”

“Is she having a good pregnancy so far?” I thought I should ask. I may be retired, but I’m still interested in things like that.

The woman nodded her head excitedly. “She was even hoping she could deliver in the same room as me… without the drama, though.”

I smiled again, and after telling her it was nice seeing her again, started to walk away when I felt her hand on my arm again.

“But her doctor is pretty sure she’s going to need a Caesarian Section…”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Breech.”

“Mmmh. Well, not to worry, because the baby may turn before she goes into labour. And anyway, she’ll be assessed again before any surgery is performed.”

“That’s what her doctor says…” She looked down at her dog for a moment. “But I just wish you hadn’t retired…”

I sighed and nodded. “I loved the challenges; I hated the hours.” Well, I had to say something.

Her smile broadened and she reached over and gave me a little hug. “I’ll tell Debbie I ran into you on the trail.”

“Do that. And wish her a successful delivery,” I added with a smile and finally managed to walk away from her and the dog, still wondering who in the world I’d been talking to.

Life’s sometimes like that for me, though. I mean old people can’t remember everything, eh?

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gozzter

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