As a doctor, what is the strangest thing you’ve ever done at your job that you would have never guessed you would be doing while in medical school?
Although my girlfriend is a urologist, and so tries to solve the urologic problems of her patients, she also has a much more sinister, second job to do in her hospital. And it’s a thing very well known by general surgeons, urologists and OR nurses all over the world.
But well hidden for the public — the Hospital Hush.
She has to fix the (sometimes almost lethal) problems OB/GYNs create in performing surgeries they never were supposed to perform in the first place, because OB/GYNs are simply not trained nor competent to do them.
She has to fix bladders which were slashed during a hysterectomy, she has to reconstruct ureters which have been cut off by OB/GYNs who did not even know they did that (“but the patient was getting really sick, so something must be going on”), and just recently she had to do both in one single patient.
The patient was not feeling well after her hysterectomy, and when a general surgeon had opened her up again, it appeared that her bladder had been ruptured by the OB/GYN. So my girlfriend was called in to fix the bladder.
In the days after the second operation, the patient got really very sick (to the point she was almost dying), and so they opened her up for the third time. This time, they found out that one of her ureters had been cut through as well by the OB/GYN.
In the end, the patient (barely) survived, but she would have died if an OB/GYN had performed the third operation.
So now you know the infamous hospital secret everyone in the hospital knows but keeps largely silent about, and please don’t say I told you.
(Hush hush.)
SOURCES: Diseases of the kidneys, ureters and bladder, with special reference to the diseases of women (1922), Internet Archive Book Images, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.
