Dear Anita,

Thank you for enjoying my definition.

I want to share my morning with you. I had a patient, pregnant about to deliver. That was hysterical. I mean beyond the norm of anxiety and pain. Truly intolerable. Demanding everyone do things only her way (the nurses and doctors) screaming and crying in hysteria every other second when we attempt to do routine things such as draw bloos for her. Mind you all of this is to HELP her deliver HER baby safely. All protocol for a delivery.  – every mother goes through it.

It took so so much out of me. I had only been at work 3 hours and I feel as though it is the end of a long week. This is what these people do to us. They are emotional vampires.

This patient was not unlike my mother. Hysterical, unable to grasp reality, incapable of listening or reasoning. Difficult difficult all around.

And I saw her differently. I saw her in a light that I didn’t see before. Before I would have been annoyed yes and exasperated. Today I saw the truth. She is unfit to be a mother with her lack of coping mechanisms. The way she spoke to us and dealt with her anxiety was truly pathologic. She required so many of us to come in and out and reason with her. So much time. So many resources. So much energy. All in vain. She continued her behavior and escalated despite.

Whether it was conscious on her end or not is no longer my focus or concern.

It is women like these that pass down their unhealed wounds and inability to cope. It is generations of torture  that will propagate.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by Cali Chica.