Posts

Showing posts from December, 2018

The Moon After Some Honey Was Licked Off

The moon shone bright in the dark desert sky as I scurried across campus to maternity. The nurse had called me for a lady at term with abdominal pain. The nurse could not hear the fetal heart sounds. Our handheld fetal Doppler’s have all been broken for the last two months. So the nurses use the antiquated metal fetascope and claim they can hear the fetal heart from time to time. I brought the portable ultrasound machine to the lady’s bedside. She had a scar on her belly they told me was from a c section her last pregnancy performed for an unknown reason. She had had no prenatal care this time around. I placed the probe on her belly and searched. I searched and searched, and I simply could not find this baby. Her belly was large but upon both feel and ultrasound I just could not find that baby. I saw a fleshy mass in her lower abdomen and bowel in her upper abdomen.  Her belly was distended, tender on palpation, and without a smooth normal gravid uterus feel nor the knobby body p