How being pregnant helps me to become a better doctor

Apart from learning how to parent, having Baby H also teach me how to become a better doctor. I believe that in order to treat, one have to empathise as well. I am a perfectly healthy person who rarely fall sick - maybe once or twice of common cold or sore throat in a year? (thank God) - so imagine how I felt when I was diagnosed with GDM (gestational diabetes mellitus). And I even need to take (oral) medication for it! Luckily my sugar reading is not that bad until I need to take insulin. 

So yes. GDM. Which means I need to eat my own words. Those advices I usually tell patients? I need to do it too. But people always say it’s easier said than done. Which is true. And to make it worse, I have a sweet tooth. I just love dessert. And since I don’t have any morning sickness or super sensitive towards any type of food during this pregnancy, I don’t have any problem in eating anything. And eating sugar just makes you want to eat more sugar. So yes, it’s a vicious cycle lol. Anyways. I had to do all the usual stuff ie met a dietitian and trial of diet control. And oh boy, it is HARD to control my diet. So yes, I can understand how difficult it is for some patients to control their diet and change their lifestyle. Since I cannot optimise my blood sugar with just diet control, I had to take medication. This time, it is slightly easier for me to comply to - since I know how important it is to control my sugar lol and also it did not induce my nausea like the hematinics - but even so, I think there was a day or two when I forgot to take the meds. So again, understandable if patients forget to take their meds (but I won’t say it’s excusable!). 

Oh speaking of hematinics. I hate it. I can’t tolerate ferrous fumarate and iberet. Both induce my nausea. Heck I even vomited twice when I was on iberet. Never bothered to try obimin. Wanted to try maltofer but no stock in pharmacies. Luckily my hemoglobin level was relatively OK throughout the pregnancy. So yes. Compliance. Easier said than done. If your patient is not compliant to medication, have to explore further. Probably the meds’ side effects?

To those of you who didn’t know - really? - if you are pregnant and doing your follow up with the government clinic, you will have two kinds of appointment. With the nurse and doctor. How frequent your follow up is will depend on your trimester and your antenatal problems. Don’t tell this to anyone but I defaulted my nurse follow up...I think in my third trimester. Disclaimer: I strongly advise you to go to all your appointments. But I get it why some defaulted. Probably transport problem? Work/home issue? Or one is so overwhelmed with the different kinds of appointment they had to go and in the end just forget about it. Or simply just lazy. Like me. Lol (again disclaimer: I strongly advise you to go to all your appointments).

When I was admitted to induce my labour - because I have GDM on meds - I got to experience almost everything I had done to patients lol. Being clerked? Duh of course, checked. Multiple attempts of line insertion? Not even sure why since I was pregnant and my line is not that hard even when I was not pregnant, but yes, checked. Having my os assessed? Duh, checked. Woken up in the middle of the night to have my vitals checked? Done. Having to wait for my turn to go into the labour room and in the end had to wait for couple of days? Checked. Got a fever and taken septic workup? Checked. Fetal tachycardia and had to be hydrated? Yes and yes (lowkey was nervous if I had to be pushed for C-sec but I will save my birth story in another post lol). CBD inserted in my urethra. Just in-and-out but it still count. Episiotomy? Yeap. So yeah. Now I can say I had gone through it too if patient complained lol. But now I know how those done - and most importantly, how it felt. You think having your os assessed is not painful? How naive of you (me, how naive of me). You getting frustrated with your patients when they keep asking for painkiller when they are contracting? You better give it to them as soon as possible because that bitch hurts. So much. 

So yes. Having Baby H for 9 months in my tummy taught me so much on how to empathise with my patients - and lowkey made me feel guilty with how I treated my patients. I don’t think I was particularly mean and I try my best to smile and give my best to everyone but sometimes when you were tired and met a particularly fussy patient, you lowkey wanna snap at them or when you explained the procedure you wanted to do (like assessing their os opening) and assure them “this won’t hurt and you only might feel slight discomfort”, boy, how wrong you are. 

Anyway. Expect another post soon because a) I actually miss blogging and b) I am still on my maternity leave and have plenty of free time - if I am not busy breastfeeding Baby H or join her sleeping lol and c) I want to blog about my birth experience and maybe things that I have bought online. Hopefully I will blog soon - maybe while taking a walk on the treadmill like how I write this post so yeah killed two birds with one stone. 

See you later.