All of the disclaimers in the world in this one. I am not even *close* to being a doctor. I frequently tell the anecdote of almost failing Intro to Geology as my science credit, or as we called it in college, “rocks for jocks”. I don’t enjoy scientific topics, and never really have. You gotta do what you gotta do, okay? Okay. Thinking people can disagree, and thinking people with less information (me) may be wrong.
I was recently recounting to a pregnant friend what I like to call The Strange Tale of Nurse Debbie1.
I’ve written many times about my three hyperemesis pregnancies. The TLDR: barf, and lots of it2. But it was only on round three where I encountered Nurse Debbie, my arch nemesis. I knew the drill by then—around five weeks, just when I started to feel hopeful this pregnancy would be different, I’d start feeling kind of nauseous at night. That would rapidly turn into not being able to keep anything, including water, down. By week nine I could barely get off of my couch. And that was a Big Ole Problem, because this was the heart of COVID and I had two toddlers.
“So, I need my Zofran prescription,” I explained to her. Dr. Thomas had told me she couldn’t give it to me quite yet at my last appointment, but if I felt I needed it in the next couple of weeks I was to call her office immediately and they would shoot one over to CVS.
Nurse Debbie, the triage nurse on the phone, was aghast. Aghast! We do not give Zofran to pregnant patients, she explained to me. The most they could give was Diclegis. Friends, this is like offering a gunshot victim a very large bandaid. Helpful! But not nearly enough.
No, I explained, I really, really need it. Dr. Thomas knows this, I promise. I have taken it my last two pregnancies.
Impossible, she continued. They do not give Zofran to pregnant patients. What about Reglan? That’s the absolute most.
I’m allergic to Reglan, I try to explain as calmly as possible. (Thinking: Isn’t this something you should know? Don’t you have my chart pulled up?) It’s in my chart. If you just talk to Dr. Thomas, if you just look at my chart—
I don’t need to look at it to know we don’t give Zofran, Nurse Debbie snapped. I would have to ask Dr. Thomas at my next appointment. Have I tried peppermint tea? Crackers?
At that point, I burst into tears and hung up the phone.
At my next appointment, which was luckily only a few days later, Dr. Thomas was absolutely horrified. She apologized a thousand times and wrote down Nurse Debbie’s name, promising to school her ASAP. She immediately prescribed Zofran, which has been proven mostly safe in pregnancy,3 and set up weekly appointments with me in labor and delivery for IVs, with instructions to call her personally with any questions. She was mortified, apologetic, and gave me the best care a doctor has ever given me. She took my hyperemesis extremely seriously, understanding that the risks of this pregnancy condition far outweigh the risks of Zofran.
So that’s who I think of, when I see all of the people online lambasting heartless OBs and their obsessions with c-sections. They’re out to get us, with their schedules and their salaries! They want to pluck your baby before it’s ripe! Doctors are swash-buckling money-borrowers; they’re in bed with pharmaceutical companies; their bottom line is their sole daydream. It upsets me because I know so many medical professionals, and I truly believe in my heart and soul that they are in this profession to care for the dignity of the human person.
But I’m thinking of Dr. Thomas, and many of those people are thinking of Nurse Debbie.
They’re thinking of long wait times and 2-minute appointments. They’re thinking of being tossed drugs without so much of a conversation, and of mom-shaming if children don’t hit milestones that were essentially pulled out of thin air, and of studies that focus on men and men and men while ignoring female anatomy. (We’ve never really studied the female body.) They’re thinking of being told they were hysterical, and anxious, and making things up.