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I blog about nothing so often. It’s hard for me to blog about things that are a little more significant. I don’t want to expose my loved ones. But I had such a hard and emotional day yesterday and I think I’ll blog about it. I’ve started several times and then backed out, but here goes.

I’ve written a couple of times about this woman that I love so much. She is my OBGyn and delivered two of my children and was a back up doctor for my homebirth baby. She gives a quality of care that is unheard of in America. She knows me completely. She knows my entire family. She has spent hours and hours with me. Each visit would last at least an hour. While I was in labor with the first baby she delivered she stayed with me the last five hours of my labor and she stuck her hand up inside of me to massage the baby’s head for an hour and a half which prevent a c-section. The second baby she delivered was by c-section and she cried with me. She would call me at home after hours and on weekend just to check. When my sister had trouble with her baby I would call her and we would cry together and then she would call my sister and cry again.

Even though the quality of care she offered (100% of her self, her best self) this was secondary to something else she did. She has this amazing way of making people believe in themselves. She is amazing. I don’t know anyone who’s life she hasn’t touched in the most meaningful way. She changed my life, profoundly. I don’t know anyone who isn’t a better person and parent for having known her. I would go to the end of the earth for this woman and there would be a long line of mothers, grandmothers, husbands and children racing me there. She’s kind of like George Bailey.

About a hear ago she preformed a procedure on a woman who was in a desperate situation, but she did not have permission. The hospital she worked for tried to get her to lie about what had happened and she would not. When she refused to lie they raked her over the coals. She has lost just about everything. It has been so painful to watch her suffer so terribly. But she is still so amazing even in all of this suffering. You know, when you deliver thousands and thousands of babies you are bound to make a mistake. Doctors are not gods. She acted in the best interest of the patient and made a decision. This was not an act of disregard or incompetence, but of compassion. To be honest, she is too compassionate, and that is what she is paying for.

Now the women she supported are there supporting her, we are crying with her. For the past year thousands of women have been worrying, writing, calling, and praying for her.

Yesterday she had to go before the state medical board. The CEO of our hospital (which she left to go to the hospital where this incident happened), several doctors, and four mothers all went down there to speak on her behalf. I’ve just cried and cried all week. Her face was so tortured. Her mouth was in a shape I have never seen on her before. Her skin wasn’t even the right color. It was horrifying to see.

I can’t tell you how it feels to watch the best person you know suffer like this. But she was like Gandhi in her response. I don’t know how she managed to endure. Then when all of the doctors and mothers started to speak for her she two members of the board where just belligerent. Their minds were already made and they wanted blood! But three men on the board spoke up for her and said that she was a wonderful doctor and that my state had lost an excellent obstetrics doctor. He said that it was a shame that she wasn’t going to deliver babies any longer. They ended up giving her a reprimand and sending her to a boundaries class. I think that a boundaries class is a good idea because she does become too involved with her patients, but I don’t think it will change her behavior.

She is no longer delivering babies and I don’t know where women will go for good care. Even though I know that she loves to deliver babies I think it was becoming too much for her. She sacrificed all of her personal life for her patients. She was sleeping on a cot in her clinic and working 20 hours a day every day. Now she has a life and she can go floating on the fiver without having to plan months in advance and still worrying the entire time about this mom or another. I think that her personal life will be much better now. Her practice is now just focused on women’s care and she can take time off or have time for herself. She has this really amazing group of friends and a very close family that all get to enjoy her more now.

I’m so sorry she has had to suffer like this, but I don’t know what else would have slowed her down. I think she is in a better place now.