osodecanela | All dressed up with no place to go......

.....except back to bed.

Was sound asleep, post my friend Al's 50th Birthday celebration when my answering service called. It was midnight. Friday morning I was supposed to assist on my patient's repeat C-section. She's due next Friday and this planned section was set to go, save for the fact that the mom has the viral crud that's making the rounds locally and dutifully showed up for her surgery with a fever of 101.0. We sent her home on Cold-eeze and Jewish Penicillin, having rescheduled her child's birthday for next Tuesday.

Apparently 4 hours ago, her uterus decided elsewise.

I sent her to L&D, and was called at 1 am, her labor nurse saying she was real uncomfortable with contractions not the every 15 minutes the mother had told me about an hour earlier, but now every 6 minutes. I ordered a dose of terbutaline to see if we could stop things, and they slowed down for a bit, but did not stop. At 10 of 2, the RN called me here at home, I said to give another dose of Terb hoping to buy us enough time for us to section her at 3am, called my colleague, OB-GYN Kenobi, then got up and dressed to head out the door. I was in the driveway, just getting in to the car when the phone rang back in the bedroom.

The terb worked. Moreover the anesthesiologist wants to wait till 6am, if we can, since the mother's last oral intake was at 10 pm.

"Oh? A glass of water is holding this up?" I asked.
"No," I was told, "A glass of OJ."

So here I am, dressed, tired, but wide awake, one of my cats staring at me as I write, curious as to why I'm up at this hour, and not petting him.