I am a survivor of socialized medicine - Part II

The second part of my article about socialized medicine involves my first pregnancy, and the medical care I received. It’s not nearly as bad as the series of events that occurred surrounding my ankle surgery, but it’s still fairly indicative of what is going to happen if this monstrosity of a bill gets passed.
When I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, I immediately went to the clinic (on sick call, see first article for an explanation of how that goes) and received a blood test, over the complaints of the lab tech, who told me that it wasn’t necessary right now, because at the point I found out, I was only about two weeks along. I was in a special situation as I was getting ready to be stationed overseas in Holland, and I wanted the results to take and maybe get a quicker doctor’s appointment.
I received the positive test and went on my overseas assignment. It took about a week to get an appointment (not bad, all things considered) and was given a prescription for prenatal vitamins and informed that there was not a maternity center at my current assignment, and that I would have to be “detached” for medical services and see a doctor on the Dutch economy.
When this happened, in 2004, there was alot of force protection issues with that, as the Netherlands are very relaxed, much like the United Kingdom, with the Muslim population. When I went to my first doctor’s appointment in Holland, I had to change my clothes prior to my appointment, and be very careful to not allow my being American to show. I saw the doctor, who spoke spotty English, was given an ultrasound and a due date and had my next appointment scheduled for four weeks later. I was relatively satisfied with the quality of care I received by the Dutch doctors.
Given the circumstances of my situation, I decided that getting out of the Army would be in my best interests, so I started the paperwork, and eventually got out. I returned to North Carolina at the end of October, with paperwork allowing me to have the baby on post at government expense. I didn’t have a job at the time, so I thought this my best option.
I was 18 weeks pregnant, give or take at this time, and I was unable to get an appointment for three weeks, and that wasn’t even to see a doctor, that was to go to “orientation” which is required for giving birth in a military medical facility. I was 21 weeks at this time, and it was still another two weeks before I could see a midwife. I see the midwife, and she was unable to find my child’s heartbeat, so I was given an emergency ultrasound. To this point I had been developing normally, and nothing had changed.
I went to make my next appointment, and was informed that I couldn’t get another one for six weeks, putting me at almost 30 weeks, the point at which a doctor normally wants to see the patient every other week, which I was informed was also not the policy at Womack, due to their patient load being so high. I was made three appointments and told to make my next two (and last two) appointments at the next appointment.
All of these appointments went normally, except that I never saw the same midwife twice, since they didn’t assign an OB, so you had to explain everything over and over again. It was extremely irritating seeing a stranger every single time I had to go to the doctor.
At 36 weeks, there was some concern about the size of my child, so I was given a “growth scan” ultrasound to determine if a scheduled C-section was needed. I was measured at something like 200 grams (7 ounces) short of a scheduled C-section. They estimated the baby at being 9 pounds, 7 ounces. Remember this difference, it comes in handy later.
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I go on as I have been, and my due date of 3 March comes…and goes. At my appointment the day after my due date, I was nearly begging to have this baby taken out of me, and was told that due to space confinements (not enough beds) the soonest they could schedule an induction was five days from now on 8 March. Of course I thought to myself if there was so much space confinement, what would happen if I went into labor earlier….hmmm, but I kept my mouth shut.
I showed up at the hospital on Tuesday morning, at seven am, and was promptly taken to the waiting area and hooked up to an IV. There were no beds for me at the time, and I stayed there for many hours. When I was finally hooked up to the Pitocin, I was on and off with contractions and they kept dying off. Two or three times I was taken off the medicine completely and taken to other rooms due to the lack of space/staff. I was finally forced to dilate to 4cm, which is supposed to trigger labor, and nothing happened. It’s now noonish on Wednesday, and my water was broken.
Nothing happened since, except seeing seven different midwives in that time and I finally dilated enough (through actions of the doctors) to be given an epidural, which I appreciated, but didn’t really need. The pain wasn’t that bad. That to me signalled that something was wrong. I was having contractions every 30 seconds to 1 minute and the monitor never got above 90ish, something I was later told was very unusual.
The epidural made me sick, and I had been vomiting for about seven hours (it’s about 8 at night on Wednesday at this point) and I got a fever, which signalled an infection known as chorioamnionitis….which is often the case in prolonged labor, and I was working on 36 hours at this point. Since I had been throwing up for seven hours, I was given Tylenol, in pill form. Think about that. Not five minutes later, they were back out. Then the baby went into distress….her heart rate was high and there was some concern.
The furthest I dilated after 44 hours was to seven centimeters, and bear in mind, I was forced to dilate to four. At 3am, 43 hours after this debacle started I was taken into an emergency C-section and had my daughter at 3:55am on 10 March.
Understanding that even the private sector is not perfect when it comes to obstetrics care, this was totally unacceptable. Due to non-reform of tort law, many doctors are dropping the OB of the OB/GYN practice, especially in my state of PA due to the rates of OB doctors getting sued. This being the case, even if they have kept the OB, they perform C-sections at a much higher rate than they did 30 years ago. Today in America, the most commonly performed operation in America is a C-section.
All that being said, my case was a clear case where a C-section should have been performed when it became clear that my labor was not progressing, even with the aid of drugs.
My daughter was born at 9 pounds, 14 ounces. I was also informed by the doctor that my pelvic bone was too small to pass her head through and I would have broken my pelvic bone if forced to give birth vaginally. He also told me that the reason I wouldn’t dialate was due to the size of her head and her inability to engage on the cervix.
If I had seen the same doctor for my entire pregnancy, I firmly believe that some of this would have been caught. My pregnancy with my second child was much more smooth, and I was informed that I was not allowed to VBAC (vaginal birth after cesaerean) due to the infection I had during my first labor and it’s possibility to increase my risk of uterine rupture and death.
Reform tort law, deregulate the industry. This is the ”change” the health care industry needs. Get the government out of my medical decisions, that’s the best way to fix this problem. I don’t deny that there is a problem, but ramming government mandated care down our throats is not the way to solve this problem.