I watched the Good Doctor Series 3 Episode 6 about a mother-to-be who died in surgery to save her premature baby. I started crying when the baby's father first touched his baby.
I suddenly had flashbacks of my first mortality as a team captain - a young newly wed couple excited and hopeful for their first baby. The patient had a heart condition and a bad case of pneumonia. When she had to be intubated, the baby went into fetal distress and we did emergency cesarean section. We were doing CPR while we were closing her up.
Informing the husband of the outcome and showing him their baby was the most difficult thing I had to do, the most important lesson I had to learn. I sought refuge at the nurse's station and sobbed my heart out at the lavatory. It was the patient's sister who comforted me and assured me that we had done everything we could, and that it wasn't anyone's fault that the patient died on their mother's birthday. It should have been the other way around. It took me a while to recover from this patient's loss, but it made me a better doctor.
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