it's not a contESt..

or anything, but jenny was bugging my about having more blog entries than me (which was met with a bunch of surprised faces, because EvErYonE knows i'm an excellent, up-to-date blogger :P) She ALso argues she writes nice long stories, while i just post a pic and write a little blurb. mer mer...i'll give you a stORY!

Last shift a labor waddled in with 210/120 blood pressure, +4 edema, pre-mature at only 36 weeks and 2 days, fully dilated and ready to push. Protocol says we transport with such pre-eclamptic signs. It was Heathers labour, but i assisted by giving an IV before we rushed her to the hospital, sirens still ringing as we transferred her to a stretcher.
The public hospital (DMC) has always made us cringe at the thought of bringing our patients there...but, it's all we have to work with. We wheeled her into the ob-gyne room to be assessed by the doctora. It.was.Awful.. they took off her dress, covered her with a little rag, injected her with meds (that was a good thing), and THEN started preparing her for a c-section (injecting local anesthetic into both sides of her butt, shaving her tummy and such). I was holding her hand AND the curtain, trying to give the 22 year old SOME sense of privacy.
THEN...oh gracious. She looks up at me and hands me a piece of gauze...
i hesitated, but took it from her, thinking it was probably dirty and diseased.
I spotted the sick, blood-stained garbage can a few feet away and threw it in from where I was standing.

so then, the nurse asks her something and she points to me. Somewhere in between her tugging on my arm and the doctors talking to her in visayan I realized she wanted the piece of gauze she gave me back. The labouring girl looks up at me and opened her mouth to reveal a BIG gap, where her 4 front teeth used to be...AHHhh.. the doctor asks me "where are her dentures?" I only had a split second to decide what was better: play the dumb white girl, or confess I carelessly discarded them. I reply "OH MY GOSH! I thought it was garbage.." as we all look over to the garbage can.
hahah. The doctor and nurses all start laughing, someone said "3 points", i.was.mortified...the poor girl! Heather still had her gloves on, so she went to retrieve the teeth. WOW...she handed them back to me, and I passed them off to the girls mother. Hopefully they washed them thoroughly before putting them back in!!, last I saw of her she was being wheeled off to the OR.