Tales From The NICU part I

Part I: Doctors

For those of you not aware, my wife, my newborn daughter and I just returned from a 8 week stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU-pronounced “Nick-You”). Our daughter was born with a Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH). She spent almost three weeks on ECMO, and the balance of the time recovering from surgeries and working on feeding issues. The former is, for now, taken care of while the latter is still being worked on. This is all set up for the topic: Some observations from the fathers prospective about life in the NICU. It is a interesting, insular, peculiar place. This first post I would like to discuss the top of the food chain, namely doctors.

There are several kinds of Doctors that I interacted with while in the NICU, Delivery Docs, Neonatal Docs and Surgeons. (I should state at the outset that except for one occasion, we recived top notch care from all the staff, right down to the greeters. This little exercise is just to try to explain some of what happened.) Of course the first one I meet was our Doctor for delivery, Dr. Doctor. I am going to change the names to protect the innocent, except in this one case. That was his name Dr. Ben Doctor. I never got around to asking him about that, not that he doesn’t get it several times a day. The question I had was “Did you become a doctor because of your last name, or did it never enter your mind?” Oh, well. He seemed like a very competent, if a bit Dickensian in his naming.

Dr. Beauford is one of the more senior neonatalogists. He is the doctor that Mrs. TOK and I met with prior to our daughter being born. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but after seeing him almost daily, something started to dawn on me. He only wore black scrubs. Why? It seems odd that some one who works with children all day dresses like Johnny Cash, or the western personification of death. I mean, aren’t these guys supposed to wear poo bear scrubs, and hand out lollie-poops? I keep expecting the guy to challenge me to 3 games of battleship for my daughters life! Not to mention that his temperament and personality matched the somber attire.

Dr. Young always called me Mr. TOK, and Montelle Mrs. TOK. which I found refreshingly formal. So much so that it was surprising. Casual is the norm in the world today, so it was nice to see someone act so 19^th century. I was always caught off guard by it, and did my best to remember to call him “Dr. Young” in response. He was the only one who used names at all regularly. Most of the time, if the doc addressed us it at all it was “Mom” or “Dad”, which I found both informal, and impersonal. The doctors also use this to avoid any unpleasantness if the parents are unmarried. Don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings you know. For example they will ask “Where is Mom?” if asking about Montelle’s whereabouts, instead of “Where is your wife?” A minor issue, I suppose, and maybe they just go tired of people yelling “She ain’t my wife, she just my baby momma.”