Favorite Patient Success Story: Will You Share? - Dr. Grayson

Dr. Grayson:
Well there’s two that I can kind of think of off the top of my head. There was a patient who basically broke her bag of water very early in the pregnancy process, very near viability, so somewhere around 24 to 26 weeks, and once that barrier to infection is gone, infection ensuing labor complications the infant go way up and she was counseled by a high-risk perinatologist in the hospital, a high-risk maternal doctor. She was counseled by high-risk newborn doctors in the hospital and we painted not that rosy of a picture, but that anything was possible and we’d be there to support her in the process.

Well she managed to make it almost an additional 10 to 11 weeks, so she made it all the way to 34 weeks at which time she had a delivery of a baby that needed some support in the nursery, but did very well and she has repetitively brought that baby back to the hospital to see us.

That baby in another scenario, in another institution may have not survived or may have survived with a lot more complication, though I don’t want you to think that we take credit for that. I mean, there was a lot of just supportive care and accepting that anything is possible in the process of getting her to that point.

The other one isn’t maybe what you would expect. The other one was a patient who had a baby that had severe chromosomal abnormalities, a patient that knew that that baby probably couldn’t survive and because of her beliefs, didn’t feel comfortable terminating that pregnancy early in the first part of the viability.

She made it probably to 34 or 35 weeks, at which time the decision was made that if the baby expired inside her uterus that she could accept that, but that she didn’t want to have anything to do with an early delivery that would compromise, she didn’t want to take on the responsibility for an early delivery.

After lots of talking with her and trying to figure out what her and her family’s goals were and what they really needed we kind of all came to the conclusion of what she really needed was to meet this baby alive and that if that baby passed away in the uterus that that would be something that she would regret always, that it was, she needed a firsthand relationship with that baby before she could let it go.

So we decided to go ahead with a cesarean section and she had that baby and that baby cooperatively stayed alive for about three days; still get choked up. That gave her time for her to spend time with the baby, her husband to spend time with the baby, extended family to come into town and I think that gave that whole family a lot of peace and I think that aspect of care is not technical. That aspect of care is taking care of the whole patient, not just doing medically what’s right and that’s how I think kind of what we need to strive to do more often.

About Dr. Robert C. Grayson, M.D., F.A.C.O.G.:
Robert C. Grayson, M.D., F.A.C.O.G., is board-certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and on staff at Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa, Ariz. He received his undergraduate degree in biology at University of California, Riverside and his Masters of Public Health from the University of California School of Public Health in Los Angeles before completing his Doctor of Medicine at the University of Southern California School of Medicine in Los Angeles.

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