When the nurse sets the rate of IV saline to a slow drip, Dr. The pressure of the fetal heart-rate monitor band across her midsection is unbearable (to be soon discovered because hemorrhaging blood has filled her abdomen), but a nurse scolds her, “Leave that on! What’s wrong with you?” (ch 1). The nurses focus on assessing the baby, ignoring her assertions that something is wrong with her. Besides, arguing would be futile - policy is sacrosanct at her institution. Barely conscious and in a wheelchair, she is powerless to argue. She senses that the problem is not obstetrical, but something else - something visceral.īut instead of being whisked into her hospital’s level 1 trauma center, she is triaged away by the security guard - because of a hospital policy dictating all patients six months gestation or higher go to Labor and Delivery. Shatteringly personal yet wholly universal, it is both a brave roadmap for anyone navigating illness and a call to arms for doctors to see each patient not as a diagnosis but as a human being.In the transcendent memoir “ In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope” pulmonary/critical care physician Rana Awdish is seven months pregnant when she develops sudden onset of excruciating abdominal pain. In Shock is Rana Awdish's searing account of her extraordinary journey from doctor to patient, during which she sees for the first time the dysfunction of her profession's disconnection from patients and the flaws in her own past practice as a doctor.

She spent months fighting for her life in her own hospital, enduring a series of organ failures and multiple major surgeries.Įvery step of the way, Awdish was faced with something even more unexpected and shocking than her battle to survive: her fellow doctors' inability to see and acknowledge the pain of loss and human suffering, the result of a self-protective barrier hard-wired in medical training. her writing style is often nothing short of beautiful - evocative and emotional.' Adam Kay, ObserverĪt seven months pregnant, intensive care doctor Rana Awdish suffered a catastrophic medical event, haemorrhaging nearly all of her blood volume and losing her unborn first child. 'I read the first chapters at such a pace that I almost had to remind myself to breathe.' Sunday Times

In Shock by Rana Awdish