The Casualties of Covid
This pandemic has affected more than just the patients who got infected with Covid 19. I’ve said it more than once, but as an OB I never really expected to be that affected.
I have been proven wrong so many times.
Today, my heart broke for my patient who came in quietly and handed me an ultrasound result. She was pregnant the last time she came to visit and I wondered why I couldn’t see any information about the baby.
Then she started crying, and the realization that she had lost her baby hit me like a 10-wheeler truck. She had been having cramps over the weekend and she had gone from one public hospital to another only to be told her case wasn’t an emergency.
I wish she could have at least called me but she said she didn’t because she didn’t have money to pay for my consultation fee. I knew she was struggling financially and i’ve comped her consultations before but this time, when it mattered most, she said she was shy.
Maybe I couldn’t have done anything to help her keep her baby anymore. But I grieve for what the health care system has become and the help it cannot or will not give anymore.
