Illogically Enthused (What medical nutjobs fail to see)

I was tumblin’ this morning like ya do on summer break after sleeping for 14 straight hours, and I came across a post on my dashboard from another local mama-to-be detailing a barrage against her well reasoned hospital birth plan.

This is where both sides of the medical fence are in error.

While she catches hell for wanting a hospital birth with legitimate life threatening complications that no reasonable midwife would take on at home or a birth center anyway, I catch hell for being healthy and young and planning on a birth center birth with no intention of even looking at OB/GYN practitioners.

No matter what either of us chooses, based on our own history and needs, there will be a medical field nut job/ advocate/ unreasonably bossy person in our lives telling us that we’re wrong purely because they prefer a different type of medicine.

I love naturopathic medicine, and I’m nutty about midwifery. That didn’t stop me from being on serious narcotics and having surgery to remove my right uterine tube earlier this year. Sticking with natural medicine in that situation would have killed me months ago. My surgeon told my family post op that she was guessing, from the amount of blood in my abdominal cavity, that I only had about a day left to live if that completely necessary, fully invasive procedure hadn’t been done.

There is a time and a place for both types of medicine. In 3 more years, I’ll be a full fledged primary care naturopathic physician here in Oregon. I’ll be able to take care of all of the things that a primary care physician needs to be able to take care of- hormone balancing, stitches, prescribing drugs, basic health support of all kinds. I’ll also be able to gauge the situations and refer to an MD or a surgeon when a health situation escalates beyond primary care.

This is an important and very necessary step!

No health care provider can provide all care for every patient. We need to be open minded and logical as we look at health care situations. Personal decisions based on the comfort level of the patient, the history of the patient, and plausible outcomes of the patient should never be judged and found wanting, just because our own personal beliefs disagree

Reckless Endangerment.

When I woke up at 8:30 this morning, my husband wasn't home.
Knowing that he hadn't slept well the day before, I hoped that the hospital hadn't asked him to stay over for a double, or even for a couple hours. Night shift is exhausting all by itself.
8 minutes later, he came through the door and I heard the distinctive rustle of what I thought was a grocery bag.
Except it was a biohazard bag.
(though he had gone to the grocery store, for color safe bleach)

We both know that healthcare can be an incredibly dangerous field. Especially with my compromised immune system for the next 6-7 months, we've been hyper aware of the dangers around every corner.
We say it like it's a joke, that "everyone has herpeghonnaclamidyaids".

But I stopped smiling, upon finding out that my husband had Hep C bled onto his scrubs and shoes last night. For patient confidentiality, I won't say anything other than they knew what risks they were exposing the staff to.
They knew.
But now my dryer is full of bleach and detergent and scrubs and shoes, and the incident has been reported to human resources, and my husband is safe in bed, asleep. Contamination risk is very low, and I know from my microbiology classes that the transmission rate of Hep C is very low without blood to blood contact. I still did a scratch check, to make sure the patient hadn't inflicted any wounds on him during their attention grubbing episode of self harm.
I'm not going to touch the laundry until it's been through 3 bleach and detergent cycles, and then we're going to run the washer empty with bleach water.

I've never seen my husband come home from work so upset.
I've never seen him give up on a patient before.
But I've also never seen the after effects of someone intentionally using themselves as a biological hazard to try to infect other people before.

Health care is dangerous.
The scare is always a good reminder. Wear your gloves. Wear the other indicated personal protection equipment.
You never know what a patient is going to do.