Practice

The bruise on my arm is finally fading.  It looks like I was grabbed- like someone with strong tendons and a strong will wrapped a hand around my elbow and held me back.

In fact, it's where the first nurse struggled to insert my first IV.

I didn't want an IV.  I didn't want much of anything to do with childbirth, though, so I knew when I became pregnant that I had a certain amount of stuff I didn't want coming to me.  I'd hoped my allotment would be less and not more, but that was hee extent of my hope, because hope is my heroin, addictive and profoundly destructive and I try to keep my habits under control.

I didn't have a birth plan, which is a document so drenched in hope it may as well check itself into rehab.

I didn't expect the sequence of events that resulted in my daughter's birth, but I cannot say I was surprised by my surprise.  On my due date, I fell while on my morning walk, tripping over some minuscule unevenness in the sidewalk and landing, with significant but not overwhelming force, on my knees, elbows, and stomach.  Alone and in pain, crouched on the deserted sidewalk of a dead end street during the workday, I called my husband to come pick me up.  He arrived with my son, who had no pants or shoes, and we drove to the hospital.  I did not come out.

Because I'd fallen, my doctor advised induction.  The induction was long and painful but relatively uneventful, and the birth was long and painful but relatively uneventful, and the recovery was long and painful but relatively uneventful.

The thing that sticks with me is how many things had to be done twice.  I delivered at a teaching hospital, and later discovered that the new Residents had changed over three days before.  Every exam was inexpert; every procedure had to be redone, from routine checks to the epidural.   Even my diet was entered incorrectly-  I was a point on the learning curve, and I'd never opt to be that point again.

On the other hand, someone has to be.  In order to perform well, we must practice, and when our performance has to do with hands-on, real life procedures on other humans, other humans must be a part of that practice.  In a way, becoming a doctor must be not unlike new parenthood. You try, and try again.  You never completely understand, but you accrete understanding.  The bruises fade.