The Blurgh

Oh, boy. Yesterday morning I headed down to the Midwife Center for my yearly well-woman exam - a great way to start the week, ladies, am I right?

(Side note: It’s kind of funny to me that just a few months ago when Frank convinced me to co-author this blog with him, I was a little skeptical of revealing anything about myself, and today I have no problem telling the world that I saw my gynecologist yesterday. My, how things change. Anyway…)

I love the women at the Midwife Center. It’s not just for pregnant women, but for women at all stages of life. I was examined by one of the new midwives there, Maria, and she is incredibly warm and funny. She even made me laugh while undergoing a pelvic exam - not exactly the easiest thing in the world.

Since she’d never seen me before, we discussed all the standard issue things. She asked me about birth control. I’ve actually not done so well with hormonal contraception in the past (hello, near-constant headache), but luckily for me, Frank has no problem taking his birth control pill everyday, so I don’t have to worry about it. She made sure I knew how to do a breast self-exam and all that fun stuff.

All in all, a pretty good visit. I left feeling happier than I’d felt when I arrived, which is definitely saying something about the quality of the Center!

Yesterday afternoon, I was just taking the first sips of my after-lunch decaf coffee when the door to the PWF flew open and Robin, one of my colleagues who works with girls in sports, burst in, her face extremely pale.

“Samara’s hurt,” she blurted out. “I think she broke her leg.”

I jumped up from my desk and followed Robin two blocks to the field that she and the girls had been using for baseball practice. A dozen girls surrounded Samara, her muscular frame on the ground, while Shalini, one of our high school student interns, knelt beside her. Her leg was bent at an odd angle and silent tears streamed down her cheeks.

I pulled out my cell phone and called an ambulance. It arrived less than two minutes later. The crew gently lifted Samara onto a stretcher and into the cab. I got in the front seat, while Shalini stayed in back. Robin stayed with the girls on the field. We went to UPMC Shadyside and the doctors worked quickly to take an x-ray of Samara’s leg - yup, broken - and then molded a cast. Her mother arrived as they were fitting the cast on her leg, and we stayed with her until the hospital released Samara. Shalini and I walked to the subway together, talking the whole way.

“I’m so glad Samara will be all right,” she said.

“Me too,” I said. “And I’m glad we didn’t have any hassles at the hospital.”

“Yeah, this national health care thing’s been working out pretty well,” she said.

I nodded. I can just barely remember the time before the U.S. had national health care - I was born in 2004, when millions of people in the country didn’t have health care. I can still remember the look on my mom’s face the day the U.S. decided to get with the program and consider health care a right, not a privilege. My mother worked as a nurse before she retired, and she used to come home with horror stories about her hospital not admitting people who needed medical attention because they lacked insurance to pay for what they needed. It took a toll on her every time, having to turn sick people away and tell them there was nothing she could do for them.

People predicted all sorts of horror stories - waiting months to see a general physician or having necessary surgeries postponed for weeks because of the wait. Nothing like that has happened. People are getting more preventive care, rather than letting medical conditions worsen until an emergency situation happens. It’s been more or less smooth sailing all along.