In less than six months after I wrote “Seven Reasons Why Pregnancy Becomes a Deadly Affair,” the public outrage is faint and inaudible regarding domestic violence committed against pregnant women. The subject therefore needs to be revisited again.
On a college campus less than 90 minutes away from my home, a 17-year-old woman was kicked and punched in her abdomen for no apparent reason other than that she carried life within her womb. The alleged father of her baby, Devin Nickels, a college student at Florida State University (FSU), was apparently not happy about his new prospective role. He purportedly contacted a high school buddy, Andres Luis Marrero, who now attended the University of Tampa, and asked him to beat his girlfriend until she had a miscarriage for $200.00. Marrero, instead, offered to assault the girl for free.
According to the University of Tampa’s newspaper, The Minaret, Nickels drove his girlfriend to a secluded wooded area near an apartment complex and Marrero allegedly assaulted her despite her pleas that she was pregnant. The woman was treated at a local hospital and her pregnancy was still viable. Hours later, Marrero allegedly wrote about the attack on his Facebook wall describing it as “fun.” He was subsequently arrested for armed kidnapping and aggravated assault on a pregnant woman. His father made a statement that his son was an “outstanding kid all his life” and he had no idea “where this was coming from.” Nickels was also arrested on the FSU campus.
Unfortunately these travesties continue. The Oakland Pressreported the story of a 17-year-old Ypsilanti, Michigan high schooler who allegedly stabbed a classmate (with whom he’d had sex) in the back of the head 12 times because she told him she “might be pregnant.” She ultimately had surgery that resulted in an intensive care unit admission. The classmate lived because she “played dead.” Read more »
When our country starts closing obstetrical units in hospitals because they “cost too much” money to operate, pregnant women need to pay attention because their babies are in serious trouble. Such was the case of the most recent casualty, South Seminole Hospital, a 200-bed hospital, that’s located within 30 minutes of my neighborhood.
More than 20,000 babies were born in South Seminole Hospital during the past 18 years, and many of the babies were delivered by a local obstetrician who died approximately three years ago. I recall sitting in the emergency room of the hospital with a fractured ankle and listening to a chime that used to ring every time a baby was born. It was a soothing and humbling sound knowing that a new life was making its grand entrance each time that chime rang. Now, it will be replaced with silence.
Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not unique to Florida. In 1997 the closing of a North Philadelphia hospital (Northeastern) affected six additional hospitals in the community and their 23,570 annual births. In my hometown of Brooklyn, New York, Long Island Hospital had an annual delivery rate of 2,800 babies, but still closed its doors to the community and sold the hospital as prime real estate to the highest bidder, citing low reimbursement rates and high premiums for malpractice insurance as the culprit behind the decision. The Bedford Stuyvesant community of Brooklyn lost St. Mary’s Hospital, a delivery center of thousands of babies in 2005. Read more »
The journey to a healthy pregnancy and delivery begins with the selection of a healthcare provider, and the challenge is to find the right one. This is the person who will be in charge of your pregnancy up until the time of the delivery, so it certainly is not a casual date. For the next 280 days your life and the life of your unborn child will be in this person’s hands. A background check is therefore in order.
One of the best ways to find the right healthcare provider is by word-of-mouth referral from neighbors, friends, or family members however please don’t stop there. Labor and delivery nurses are also a great source of referral because they have seen physicians and midwives under their most vulnerable and challenging moments.
Don’t feel intimidated about checking a provider’s credentials — this is public information. You can find out whether the provider’s medical license is current or expired. You’ll also be able to obtain information on whether the provider has ever been disciplined by the board for medical malpractice or unprofessional behavior or misconduct. Healthcare providers are not exempt from problems with alcoholism, drug addiction, professional incompetence, and unprofessional or unethical behaviors. Although less than five percent of healthcare providers have egregious problems, you want to make certain that your provider is not one of them. Read more »
Art imitates life, and there’s nothing more hilarious than art imitating a woman in labor. I “stumbled” upon this incredible video and was in awe. Thea Monyee and her husband, GaKnew Rowel, are talented young poets who share their parenting experience at a Def Poetry session in Los Angeles.
What amazed me is the accuracy and clarity of Thea as she describes the laboring experience. Her comments regarding the labor-inducing medication Pitocin are both hilarious and laser-sharp and her description of the epidural placement were reminiscent of my days as an OB/GYN resident. Oh, would I get annoyed with the anesthesiology residents who couldn’t place the catheter correctly into a patient’s back on the first try.
Thea and her husband are a delight to watch. Have you had a similar experience while in labor? If so please share your stories, because as Thea and GaKnew so wisely state: “Nothing compares to having a baby.”
When the Nebraska lawmakers voted to end Medicaid prenatal care for approximately 1,500 women, their unborn babies paid the ultimate price.
Any labor room hospitalist who is responsible for the care of unassigned pregnant women will tell you that it is far easier to take care of pregnant women who have had prenatal care than it is to take care of women who haven’t. The recent vigil of the Equality Nebraska Coalition in front of their state capitol to honor five dead babies whose death can be related to the lack of access to prenatal care speaks volumes.
On or about February of 2010, Nebraska expectant mothers received a “Dear John” letter from Nebraska’s Health and Human Services stating that their pregnancies were no longer covered under Medicaid. It appeared that the rationale for making such a drastic decision involved a resistance of state politicians to pay for medical services of “illegal immigrants.”
However, when one reads the comments on a popular website called Baby Center.com, the pregnant women who were affected were U.S. citizens who were college students, wives of husbands who had lost their medical insurance, and unemployed women. Eventually all the women were able to receive government-sponsored healthcare coverage, but the panic preceding their reinstatement was palpable. Read more »
It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…
I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…
I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…
When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…
I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…
