Tragedies

Yesterday, I delivered the baby of a 28 year old Puerto Rican woman. When the baby arrived, the nurse exclaimed "it's a girl!" and tears rolled down the patient's cheeks. The nurse asked "those are tears of joy, right?" and the patient nodded yes, but her tears did not look happy. I asked her the gender of her two children at home and she told me she had two girls. She admitted she had been hoping for a boy. She was crying because the new baby was a girl.

She was reluctant to breastfeed after the delivery.

I have never understood how people could be so disappointed with the gender of their baby. I found this scenario tragic. I wondered how this kid would feel if she ever knew that her mother cried with disappointment when she was born.

Then again, you never know what people are going through. Perhaps the father of the baby (who was absent for the delivery) was putting pressure on the patient for a male child. Perhaps he was sexually abusing her other two girls and a third girl would mean more pain. Who knows what was behind those tears.

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A 34 year old woman on our service is dying of cervical cancer. I heard she missed her pap smears for only 6 years. She did have some mildly abnormal paps before but I mean, who knew? Now she is dying. She just told her two kids who are 8 and 10 years old.

During resident sign out when she was discussed, my chief resident said, "Jesus! I hope she doesn't die on our shift. That would really bum me out for the holidays."

I silently vowed to schedule my pap asap.

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I recently found out that one of my contemporaries, a black gay man in Chicago, died from AIDS. His death really shook me up. People are not supposed to die in their mid thirties. It's just wrong, so wrong. I had heard stories about this person engaging in risky sexual behavior in his youth (ex: sex in a Zayre parking lot, forest preserves and in the old IC station--now Metra--on 53rd). He got himself arrested once for indecent exposure during one of these episodes. I don't know. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Just about everyone has had some instance of sexual irresponsibility in their lives. I mean, when I think about the behavior I witnessed in college...Hello? AIDS and cervical cancer seem to me to be too steep a price to pay for having sex.

Depressing.