tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16882602.post116097027745760237..comments2023-11-03T02:57:27.778-07:00Comments on yarn, kids, dogs, and a few wierdos: Not On the Teamwoolywomanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14798060848062776281noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16882602.post-1162873215203333062006-11-06T20:20:00.000-08:002006-11-06T20:20:00.000-08:00I'm enjoying your blog. You write well. Great pi...I'm enjoying your blog. You write well. Great piece on the suburbs. I was lucky enough to grow up in a New Orleans neighborhood full of jumbled housing styles and equally jumbled races and religions... Most of my relatives had fled to the 'burbs to escape crime ... and to the 'burbs on weekends was where I went so our Moms could shop together and cousins could play together. So I understand, but I didn't really LIVE it ... I was a weekender. At least I could escape the 'burbs, and go home, and play stickball in the streets like a kid in a Bruce Springsteen song. <BR/><BR/>'Burb culture took a big bite out of all my cousins' psyches. <BR/><BR/>Your nursing woes -- and I've only read a handful -- reminded me instantly of a dear friend who was a trauma nurse at New Orleans' Charity Hospital before Katrina hit. <BR/><BR/>Previous to Major Trauma Unit, she spent many years in the ER, and told me many a hair-curling story about people who need health education and don't want it or get it. <BR/><BR/>The one that sticks in my mind the most clearly is this one:<BR/><BR/>Cold, wet, windy, miserable winter morning. Mostly the ER is full of people with UR's. Two girls, about thirteen or fourteen, rush into the ER. One is screaming at the top of her lungs -- "Help! I'm dying!" -- and is about to pop with a baby.<BR/><BR/>No adults, of course, were at home when the girl went into labor (to say nothing, no doubt, of when she got pregnant). So she went next door and found her friend, who found some quarters, and they got on the bus, where her water broke.<BR/><BR/>Some gentle questioning on the part of my friend ... still fairly new to the ER in a big, urban, charity hospital at this point in her career ... still full of idealism for helping people ... revealed that the girl DID NOT KNOW she was going to have a baby. She thought she was getting fat. She thought she was dying from a "stomach sickness," and did not understand about "Sexual intercourse" or even "having sex" so finally my friend asked if she had done "the wild thing" with a boy, and she said yes. <BR/><BR/>So my friend had only a very short time to spill the facts of life to inform this fully-dilated child that:<BR/><BR/>1. she was pregnant, and ...<BR/>2. she was going to have a baby...<BR/>3. right now.<BR/><BR/>The girl starts screaming even louder. "But I'm scared to get operated on! I don't want the doctor to cut me open!"<BR/><BR/>Still trying to keep the girl calm, my friend gently explains that everything looks normal, and the baby's going to come out the normal way, through her vagina, through her birth canal, right there between her legs, and she'll be okay ...<BR/><BR/>and the girl still does not understand, and this time she really SCREAMS ... "But if the doctor don't cut me open, how's the baby gonna get OUT?"<BR/><BR/>And my friend violated all of her lofty ideals right on the spot and said, "Honey, the baby's gonna get out THE SAME WAY IT GOT IN!!!"<BR/><BR/>Which did not diminish the screaming.<BR/><BR/>The baby came immediately.<BR/><BR/>That part's perversely funny. <BR/><BR/>Here's the part that's not: after the young mom delivers uneventfully (excpet for the screaming), she's sent up to maternity. My friend at that point remembers thinking, "probably tomorrow, that girl is going out of here with a brand-new baby in nothing but a disposable diaper, and a giveaway fleece welcome blanket, and a little shopping bag full of sample diapers and sample formula and coupons and a booklet on breastfeeding. And she wil get on the same bus, and go home, with no adults, and no clue whatsoever what to do." <BR/><BR/>It wasn't the first kid having a kid she'd ever seen, of course. But this particular girl was SO clueless, it was terrifying.Dez Crawfordhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786093691926252698noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16882602.post-1161410109600641972006-10-20T22:55:00.000-07:002006-10-20T22:55:00.000-07:00You probably weren't aiming at this goal, but what...You probably weren't aiming at this goal, but what a beautiful post. <BR/><BR/>(And I never knew that they could build places like that! The schools? That matched? Wow. Scary.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com