"Smile Away..."

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"When it rains, it pours."
This is what happens when you lose your benign streak and start getting toxic in your admissions and ward calls. I am from duty and my duty last night was perhaps the most toxic of all duties I ever had in my OB-GYNE rotation. Two C-sections, one in the glorious unforgiving early hours of the morning, and two Normal Spontaneous deliveries at the DR with still three more patients screaming in the labor room just across the hallway. Did I mention a bleeding patient whose face and palpebral conjunctivae already as white as paper? Oh yes, we have to do some D&C on her too. Luckily, she was a house case so I got to do the scraping. One of the NSDs was also a house case so for the first time after so many months, I got to do the delivery by myself, with my Junior Consultant being my first assist. I did the episiotomy and the repair, the whole enchalada! And I get to manage her post partum at the wards. One of the NSDs was a patient of my wife's OB. She was a DDR and she had to deliver the baby without her private OB. The head was already peeking and one snip on the perineum with the scissors and the baby's out!And the poor creature was already bathing in his own meconium! During the episiorhapphy, Dr. Gustilo (my wife's OB) and I had a little chit-chat. She asked about our son who is turning four this Saturday already.

The entire 24 hour shift was toxic and the ward calls were not merciful either. But I was enjoying every moment of it. One nurse asked me, "Doc, why are you still smiling?" Because, I couldn't help it. A smile always makes one's day no matter what has happened or is happening or is about to happen. Like flu, smile is contagious and once you flash that smile on a patient, his or her day is complete. I sometimes think that a smile can have as much therapeutic effect as with penicillin. If it does, then it is mandatory for all physicians and health care workers to smile, to flash those pearly white teeth and spread the happy virus.

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