Now, more than ever, I realize how scary it can be for someone who
doesn't have a background in medicine to be admitted to the hospital.
It's even scarier to be a parent and watch your child be admitted. My
whole life I've always thought that raising a baby, at least until
they're around age 3 or 4 would be a pretty easy thing to do. What do
babies do? They eat, sleep, cry, babble, crawl, and walk. Pretty easy to
deal with. Never have I been scared to be around babies, to hold them,
to change their diapers, or to feed them. Raising a healthy baby should
be a pretty easy thing to do right?
But now, for the first time, I'm seeing everything that
can go wrong in the health of a newborn baby. Of course, some of it can
be attributed to the parents (note: cocaine use and pregnancy should
never occur at the same time), but some of it has absolutely nothing to do with the parents at all. Sometimes, even though mom and dad are perfectly healthy, babies can develop abnormally and quite frankly, it's nobody's fault and
there's no reason for it. In the last few days, I've really seen how
scary it is for parents to see their precious newborn baby decompensate
right in front of their eyes. It can be something as simple as a sudden
vomiting episode or a just a feeling that maybe the baby is a bit more
lethargic than yesterday. Even a sudden temperature of 100.4 (something
that wouldn't normally be a huge issue in adults) can be worrisome in
newborns. For each of the three clues I just listed, I've now seen cases
where the baby was admitted to the NICU and it turned out to be so much worse - real issues that meant the difference between life or death
for the baby. Perhaps if the parents had brought the child in one day
later, he would've died...if they had brought him in one day earlier, he
would've lived.
Watching these parents with their
babies, I can't help but imagine myself as a mother and having to watch
my own kids go through the same thing. It's impossible. What must they
be thinking when the nurses are poking their baby for blood? When the
doctors come around to round and speak in what seems to be a completely
different language? What do they think when they don't see or speak to a
doctor for hours or even days at a time while they watch their baby
helpless and lifeless in the crib? I'm seeing so much of this play out
in the NICU and I've realized it's such a difficult scenario to grasp
unless you're in the shoes of the parents or unless you have an
understanding of how physicians function in the hospital.
As
a medical student, I'm often in between the parents and the physicians.
Sometimes I might even spend more time talking to the parents and
relaying information if rounds occur when the parents are not beside
their baby. One thing to point out though is that even though parents
might not see the doctors around all the time, they are always up to date on the baby's status and on what's going on. At Children's Oakland, these Attendings and residents are on top of their work in the NICU. Rarely
do they take a break and that's only usually for some food and coffee to recharge. From my end, I just hope that I'm doing
enough to help these parents understand what's going on with their baby
and help them realize that the medical team is doing everything to make
sure that the baby can return home in good health.
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