220: What if they died in your hands?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. I was just like out of my mind with grief. I couldn't even fathom. Like I just thought, this is not happening. Like how could this be happening? This isn't supposed to happen. I just, I felt physically sick. I felt like it was my fault. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein.

You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 220, What If They Died in Your Hands?

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I grew up in a small town in Michigan, you know, middle class family.

My parents came from very poor backgrounds. My dad's family had five children and they were all sleeping in the same room and eating popcorn for dinner. So there was a kind of poverty I never knew as a child. And the same thing with my mom. So they were both from pretty poor families. But my dad was a super smart guy. He applied himself and just did exceedingly well.

My dad worked very, very hard. He was like kind of a workaholic. I think my mom was really overwhelmed with three small children. I felt like I had a healthy fear of my mother. I wouldn't say she was mean, but she wasn't like one of those fuzzy mothers that like hug and kiss you and tell you they love you all the time.

And so I think I always had a sense of wanting that more. And although I totally adored my father, I think often it was kind of the same thing. Like I never really felt close to him until later in life. I had a very loving family, but still there was just a peace lacking there.

Maybe one of the reasons I felt kind of alone and wanting reassurance from my family is that I was molested as a little girl, probably from the ages of three to seven or eight. You know, obviously at that time, when you're a child, you don't know what's wrong or who you tell. But I think on some level, I just felt weird and I knew something was wrong and I was scared.

One day, I guess my mom walked in and saw something nefarious happening and asked me about it. And all of a sudden it was, "We're not going to Grandpa's anymore." And I just felt like it was all my fault. Well, we're not going to Grandpa's because of me and what I did. And so there were things happening like, I remember one time they went over there for Christmas, but I wasn't allowed to go.

That kind of set the stage for always being worried that I wasn't good enough and that it's all my fault. As an adult, like those neural pathways that are created when you're a child are very, very difficult to rewire as an adult, no matter how successful or what resources that you have.

Everything was kind of kept hidden. And I knew later on in life, I knew that my dad called my grandpa and said, if you ever touch my girls again, I'm going to kill you.

Later in life, I've talked to my mom. She and my dad had lots of different conversations. And the conclusion that they came to was, well, we don't want to put on any kind of stand in a court. And I think they saw it on TV that kids get on the stand and have to say terrible things and they're affected forever. And they thought that would be worse.

They did the best they could. They really did. But with this particular thing in my life, I really think that it would have just made such a world of difference in my whole life if, you know, he had been confronted, he went to jail, and it was out in the open, and I wasn't left feeling like the black sheep who thought it was all her fault. It was really more than just an average kid should feel.

My grandpa died suddenly at age 61 from a massive heart attack. I heard the phone ring and I heard my mom talk on the phone and I could tell that he had died by her conversation. I was 11, was in fifth grade. So at this time I had been isolated from him for probably three years.

When the phone call came through and my mom said, you know, grandpa died, I said, oh, are we going to have a party? That was the first thing out of my mouth. And I just felt like, oh, and she said, how could you say that? Now, as an adult, I think, well, he molested me. Why wouldn't I say it? In that moment, I just was like, oh, my God, I should not have said that.

My dad came home and was crying. I had never seen my dad cry in my life. Like he was a pretty stoic guy and he was wiping his eyes and he looked at me and I said, daddy, I feel like it's my fault. And he said, I know. I felt like I was crumbling inside, you know, like I needed to hear that it wasn't my fault. Like even now I'm 53. Why is the emotion so raw? Yeah.

He was such a kind, loving man. But I think during that time, he was so overcome with emotion that that's just how it went down. It was never talked about. I was not allowed to go to the funeral. And that was that. It was this little kid that just had the weight of the world on her shoulders. And then when I asked my mom if I could get into therapy, she did not want that.

She's very, you know, our business is our business and we don't want anyone to know. And so I went for a preliminary evaluation by a child psychologist. And she said if I went back that she wasn't going to let me play softball anymore. So I never went back.

My fallback was if I get all A's, people give me positive attention. And that's what I did. I got all A's. Come hell or high water, I was going to get all A's. That was my protection. I get accolades from my parents and from the teachers, and I feel better about myself. I did struggle with developing breasts and feeling ashamed and that kind of thing.

I was always afraid. I was afraid people didn't like me. I did get bullied a little bit. Some of those boys the year ahead of me were a little interested in me, and the girls in that class didn't like that. So I got thrown up against lockers or had my head smashed into the drinking fountain.

I just didn't feel safe. And because of that, I didn't have sex until well into college. I was terrified, first of all. And secondly, in and among all of this, I grew up Catholic. My first confession was probably one of the most traumatic things that's happened to me, really, because I was so terrified and overwhelmed with guilt.

When I went to college, it opened my eyes to wonderful things. Like, this is so great. Like, why didn't anyone tell me about this before? And I just, I really loved it.

As soon as I got into college, I got myself help. There was so much in front of me. Like, oh, I can breathe. There's people that are like me and that can help me. And I can go here and pay 60 bucks and have someone help me feel good. And it feels good that I was able to do that for myself. Then, unfortunately, I joined a sorority. I was friends with all these people and I thought it was great, but it kind of seemed superficial and it wasn't really my thing.

I met a boy and I fell in love, madly in love, like I've never felt. And turns out that he was someone's boyfriend from the sorority in high school. She found out and my world crumbled again with the mean girls who ostracized me. So I had to leave the sorority.

I felt so bad. And it was the first person I ever had sex with. And that just multiplied the grief like by five million. And I remember after the first time I had sex, I was out at a sorority function and I was almost paralyzed with fear. Oh my God, someone's going to know. And I did something wrong. And so I was still having a lot of that guilty feelings even then. And then when these girls all turned against me, they all abandoned me.

It was heartbreaking. I left the sorority and I met another group of friends who were better for me.

And this man who I basically left my friends for ended up abusing me, mostly psychologically, but he would hold me by my wrist until I was bruised. He wouldn't let me leave the apartment because I was trying to leave him. He was very emotionally manipulative, told me he was going to kill people if he finds out that I'm talking to this guy or that guy.

And it took a long time to get away from him. He hid in my closet. I moved to a different place and he came to a party and he hid in my closet in my room and was watching me. He would call and say, why don't you just kill yourself? It was a really scary time. I loved him so much. I couldn't believe that he turned into this monster like that. I finally got away from him, but it destroyed a lot for me.

I went to a counselor, a school academic counselor, and I wanted to go to medical school, I thought, because I had taken this amazing class

class on neuroanatomy, just dissecting lamb brains and doing all the stuff that most people were really turned off to. And I just thought was the most amazing thing. And so I thought, geez, I should go to med school. But I didn't do well my freshman year, not as well. Like I wasn't getting LAs. I was more of a solid B student. The academic counselor told me I'd never get into medical school. So I went to nursing school.

I finished nursing school with honors and I was a nurse for about five years when I decided to go back to medical school. So I toyed around with it. And then I lived in New York City at the time and I had this weird thing happen to me where I saw this guy mug this lady.

And I got subpoenaed and I was at the courthouse going to testify against this guy. And this lady also saw him do it, was sitting next to me. And she was talking to me and I said, I was a nurse. And she said, why aren't you a doctor? And I'm like, you know, it's interesting because I always kind of wanted to be a doctor. And she said, well, you must not want to be one or you would be one. I thought, she's right. I'm scared. And she's challenged me. She's saying, if you really wanted to do it, you could do it. And so I did.

The next day, I handed in my letter of resignation and I went home and started studying to be a doctor. That spitfire of a woman, wherever she is, is the reason why I'm a doctor now. I applied, I went to some interviews and I got in and I could not believe it. Oh my God, I got in. This is proof. I am good enough to do this. And it was really one of the happiest times in my life.

My classmates were great. Every single rotation I loved. I would go on medicine rotation and I would say, I'm going to be that kind of doctor. And then I would go on an intensivist rotation and I'd say, oh, this is what I'm definitely going to do. And then I did OB and I knew that I had to do OB. I loved delivering babies. There's nothing like it. I knew that there was nothing else I should do.

When I was first experiencing it, it was just like, this is crazy. You're a part of this person's most intimate part of their life. They are so vulnerable. They're half naked and they are bringing a life that they have coveted and grew for nine months and I get to help them. It kind of blows my mind when I think about it.

It's so rewarding and it's so beautiful. And even now, it's so humbling. And I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to be able to be part of something so special. So I found this job. It's called OB Hospitalist. It's all hands-on. All I do is deliveries and gynecologic emergencies.

99% of what I do is deliveries, C-sections, labor. And the stuff that happens, you can't believe. I was working one night. This was back when I used to do forceps. I've really gone away from doing that now. But I wanted to put forceps on this baby because the mom wasn't pushing and the baby was right there. And I thought it'll be just easy. And I was very good at them.

I put the forceps on the baby and something about them didn't articulate well. I pulled and they slid right off. That is not good. And I thought, oh my God, I hurt this baby.

So I ran her back to the OR and I did the C-section and the baby had like neck bruises from the forceps and blood buildup under the skin, but nothing tragic. But I was devastated. I was devastated. They didn't articulate right. I should have taken them off and got another pair.

But I thought I was just being too fussy or too, I don't know, meticulous. And it was a bad mistake. I mean, the baby was fine and the mom was fine. But I had to leave, go out into the front lawn of the hospital and just sob because I just felt like that little precious baby is in my hands. And I did something that shouldn't have been done.

And I just went to the parents and apologized. And a lot of my patients at that place were Hispanic. And they hugged me and they said, doctora, don't worry. You know, and these loving, beautiful people, you know, forgave me. Even when you're doing your best, mistakes happen and it doesn't feel good. This one time we had a patient who,

And one of the residents broke her water and she started to seize. I said, this is not an eclaptic seizure. Like she was dying in front of my face. We called a code. We were doing compressions on her and we ran her to the OR. I went in there. The baby was out in less than 30 seconds and it lived. But the mom died immediately.

So, when I was sectioning her, there was no blood because she was dead already. I mean, it sounds terrible. I hate to even use that word. But she had died already, so there wasn't any blood. Like, it was awful. And I got the baby, and the baby was crying, and everybody was crying. It was like, oh, my God, we saved the baby. We saved the baby. And I just, like, fell to my knees, like, oh, my God. Yeah.

I didn't know this mom, but I went to the funeral because I had to. That poor man, he had a newborn and a two-year-old and a wife who had died. She had an amniotic fluid embolism. And that is a deadly thing. And it's rare. But when it happens, it's almost uniformly fatal. But like, why? I'm so glad that baby lived, but why?

Why did that happen to her? Those are some of the kind of trials and tribulations along the way. I mean, despite all the crazy little things that happened that shouldn't have happened, or maybe you shouldn't have done that, there's a million awesome, awesome stories. I've also saved many women's lives from bleeding to death. I just had one the other night.

where a mom came in profusely bleeding and I sectioned her and she was very, very sick. And she told me, she's like, I'm not going to lie to you. I was seeing the light. It puts goosebumps on me because she kept asking me on the way to the OR, am I going to die? Am I going to die? And I'm like, no, you're not going to die. But really, you don't know. I just work as fast as I can. And she lived.

I think that I'm a talented surgeon and a compassionate doctor. But if it's somebody's time, it's kind of just somebody's time. Like, I don't have control over that. And I don't believe in God or anything. I think some of this stuff, it doesn't matter how good you are. You can't prevent it. You just can't.

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This Is Actually Happening is sponsored by ADT. ADT knows a lot can happen in a second. One second, you're happily single. And the next second, you catch a glimpse of someone and you don't want to be. Maybe one second, you have a business idea that seems like a pipe dream. And the next, you have an LLC and a dream come true. And when it comes to your home, one second, you feel safe,

Things were really taking a heads up in my life. I had been divorced for a while and I met someone. He had three kids, I had one, and we fell in love and I was like,

was happy. I was happy in my career. Life was very good. You know, life is finally turning up for me. It's going up. It was Halloween night and I was on with another amazing physician that night. You know, we were friends, but it was a very, very busy night. I had several patients in labor and I had done a couple of deliveries already and she did too. And we were just kind of juggling a

Outside of having some minor medical illnesses, she was fairly healthy. She was older for a first-time mom. As soon as I went in the room that night, before I even had the hemorrhage and the other deliveries and all that stuff, I just got a bad vibe. I've been doing this long enough to know when patients are not trusting me.

There are plenty of entitled people that just believe that everything should go perfectly and they deserve the best. And so I bent over backwards to try to make them feel comfortable and cared about. And I laughed with them. And I think that I slowly melted away the ice a little bit. But it was busy. And a very good nurse was taking care of the patient, very experienced nurse.

All the moms are on electronic fetal monitors. So they have this thing strapped to their abdomen so that when I'm sitting at the nurse's desk, I can see all the baby's heart rates. And you have a lot of eyes on these fetal heart strips.

There's another doctor there. There's six nurses looking at the strips at the main station. And then there's the nurse taking care of the patient who's primarily dedicated to looking at that strip specifically. So there's lots of eyes on these fetal heart tones. I went in and checked her and I noticed that the baby had some molding of the head.

And that's pretty common when the head's not going to fit. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes you get lots of molding, the baby flies out. But I noticed that there was some molding. So I was a little worried that it wasn't going to happen vaginally. But at no time ever did I think the baby was in jeopardy.

The baby's heart tones were beautiful. Contraction pattern was beautiful. There was no meconium. There was nothing that made me worry that something was wrong with her baby. This was like a perfect baby. We were very busy on the unit, like I said, and so I checked her and we let her kind of labor down. It's called labor down, which means kind of let the uterus do the work for a while and not have her push right away.

So that's what we did. And then we had her push and she kind of pushed on and off for a while. And I went in to evaluate the mom and she was complete, not really moving the baby, but it was down far enough that I thought maybe if I could just get her pushing well enough, she'll be able to do it because that's what I always do. That's what I've done for 20 years.

So I went back like an hour and a half later and she hadn't really moved it. So I said, I think we're going to have to do a C-section. I'm really sorry. It was a category one strip, which is the best the strip can look. For 30 minutes before we did the section, it was a category one strip.

I'm doing the section and my partner, the other doctor on call, comes into the room to help me because we knew any time that the patient's been pushing for a while, the section's a little bit harder because now I have to do the section and also get the baby from a very low position in the pelvis, which can be a challenge. So everything's going fine.

I put my hand in to get the head out. And just like I had suspected, it was really lodged in there. So a nurse goes from below to push the head up, which is something that we do often when these people have been pushing for a while and the head popped out. But I really had to use more force than I wanted to to get the head out. So I get the head out and I get the baby out. And the baby looks very white to me. Something was wrong. It took a gasp.

And it died in my hands. Like, I'm pretty sure it died in my hands. But I was still hoping. So I cut the cord and we called neonatal intensive care unit. And the parents were like, is everything okay? And I'm like, on the inside, I'm like, oh my God, what's happening? Like that baby was fine.

All of a sudden, I hear the nurses go, one and two and three, one and two and three on the baby's chest. And I've never in my life will forget that one and two and three because they were coding my baby. I looked over the table to my colleague and I said, is my baby dying? She couldn't look at me.

And the parents, you know, because of C-section, the mother's awake and the dad's in there, especially this C-section because it was an emergency. They were like, is the baby okay? And I'm like, they're working on the baby. We'll let you know. So now I am on autopilot. I am nauseated. I don't know how I finished the surgery. All I could hear is them working on the baby and it not coming back. During the time that I was closing her, maybe 25 minutes, 30 minutes,

The baby didn't have heart rate. It never had a heart rate. So they stopped. The neonatologist came over and said, we're really sorry. We did everything we could. And they are howling. If you've ever heard grief like that in your life, it is the most horrifying thing. I will never forget it. So I stopped what I was doing. And I went around the drape and I put my arms around them.

And I held them in my arms and I just told them how sorry I was. I was so, so sorry. I did everything I could. I've had babies die, you know, but usually it's like there was an anomaly or there was something that they knew what the outcome was going to be. But I've never, ever had a baby that looks so perfect, was beautiful. The strip was beautiful. The labor was perfect. Everything was great.

Why did that baby die? I can't imagine the grief, the absolute abject grief that these people who were waiting for nine months for their special baby, and they didn't get it. I was just like out of my mind with grief. I couldn't even fathom. Like I just thought this is not happening. Like how could this be happening? This isn't supposed to happen. I just, I felt physically sick. I felt like it was my fault.

I finished the surgery and they took them off to the room. Then they wrapped up her sweet baby, gave the baby to the parents. And I went into my call room and dry heaved for 20 minutes. I totally decompensated because under being a doctor, I'm a human.

And I'm a human that always thought everything was her fault her whole life. And now it's like the quintessential last final exam is telling me it's your fault. See? I mean, the whole unit was crying. The nurses were bawling. There was not a dry eye on that unit. Nobody. Nobody. These events are exceedingly rare.

So I went back into the room and I told them again how sorry I was. And I told them if they wanted an autopsy, that they could have one. And, you know, I don't know what happened. We did everything we could. And at that time, I thought, I wonder if I hurt the baby when I was trying to pull it out of the pelvis. You know, because like I said, it was stuck in there. I just assumed, I said, I must have hurt it.

Even if that were the case, I either have to get it out of the pelvis or it's going to die in the pelvis. I had to get it out of the pelvis. The very next day, I left out of town on a planned academic thing that I did not want to go to. But the other physician that was working with me that night was going and she said, you need to go. You are just going to decompensate at home. At least you'll be with us here. You need to go.

Myself and this other doctor were just still beside ourselves and what did we do wrong? And did we hurt that baby? And it was just the theme of the weekend. Well, in the meantime, the grandparents of the baby came into the hospital.

They went ballistic. They demanded an autopsy that was going to be done at a different hospital. So the baby had to be taken to a different hospital and security had to be called because they were threatening everybody. And they said, I saw a doctor in the hallway and she was cold as ice, but I was not even in the state at the time. So they saw somebody else there.

They were building this whole thing like this cold, heartless doctor killed our baby. They were told later, you know, she wasn't even there. And the parents knew how sorry I was and how bad I felt. But there's no words. I mean, what words can I say to make them feel better about losing their baby? There are none. But I held them. They felt me. I don't know. How else can you be a human to someone? I don't know. Everything kind of died down.

I was traumatized, though. I didn't want to really go back to work. And then I went back to work. Of course, first thing right out was a patient who had been pushing who needed a C-section. And I thought I was going to throw up. I'm like, how am I going to do this? I don't know if I can do it. I don't want to. I don't want to section anyone. I don't want to hurt any more babies.

The first few sections were very hard in the first few days at work. And I would say the first couple of years afterwards, it was just really hard to work. I was nervous wreck. I was vigilant about heart tones, like hyper-so. I would call the nurses a million times. Did you check this? Did you check that? I couldn't relax. The dreams, the dreams I had were just these vivid dreams of,

Like I would have a dream that I was in court and everybody was yelling at me and the patient and her husband were there screaming at me. And it was just so vivid. It was just so awful. I couldn't function. I felt like I killed that baby. Like my logical side knows I didn't. But growing up, always feeling like everything's her fault. I just knew that somehow it was my fault.

I couldn't get out of bed. I broke up with my boyfriend. I was out of control emotionally. A couple of my friends that I worked with who were just amazing human beings that knew that none of it was my fault and kept telling me that over and over and over again. They hooked me up with a doctor who worked with doctors.

And I thought, okay, because this is great because I go to the library. There are no books. There is not a book to help me. There is nobody apparently that's lost a baby in their whole damn life because there's no book about it. And you know why? Because we live in a society of secrecy, doctors do. You can't admit that you're human. So I went to see this woman. I talked to her every week and I would be like, I killed that baby. She's like, you didn't kill the baby.

How do you know? Like you weren't even there. I had one job. My one job is to make sure the baby and the mom is okay. And I didn't do it. I did not do it. I felt like I was like some murderer. For months, I just beat myself up. And it was just an awful thing. If I hadn't been running at the time, I think I would have gone crazy. But she really helped me. She really helped me. I think slowly started to improve.

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There is nothing wrong with the baby's head. There's no hematoma. There's no hemorrhage. There's nothing wrong with the eyes. The spinal cord is completely normal. I did not hurt that baby getting it out. And so I'm like, oh my God, thank God. I think I can start to live with myself a little bit.

I didn't hurt it. Okay, I've got 10, 15 doctors telling me I didn't do anything wrong. I've got an autopsy saying that it wasn't me taking the head out of the pelvis. And the autopsy had some other weird things. And I thought, well, maybe it had some kind of congenital abnormality that wasn't picked up with normal screening. And I felt like I could breathe a sigh of relief. I still was a nervous wreck at work.

I looked into non-clinical jobs like maybe insurance review or anything else. I felt like I just, I don't know how much more my soul can take. But I just felt like a glimmer of hope after that autopsy. That little person inside me was finally giving me a break and saying, maybe this really wasn't your fault.

I was running again. I felt good. Back together with my boyfriend. Things are good. And then almost a year to the day, I got a three-inch subpoena on my door saying that I was being sued. And it started all over again. Every time I went to the mailbox, I thought, this is the day.

It is the scariest thing. And when you go into obstetrics, you know that you have an 85% to 90% chance of getting sued. In fact, my therapist even said, prepare yourself. There's no way you're not going to get sued. But I still held on. I just thought, I'm a good person. I didn't do anything wrong. All this stuff proves it. And they're going to know I'm a good person. And they won't sue me because I did my best.

It destroyed me. It destroyed me. They wanted to sue me for bodily deformity because I sectioned her. They wanted to sue me for, I mean, they wanted to sue me for everything and they sued everyone. They sued the doctor who assisted me. They sued the nurse who took care of her. They sued the hospital. They sued everybody for millions of dollars. I was sick.

I had to relive this again. I know they've got to live with it forever. I know they do. I don't mean to feel selfish, but my God, please stop punishing me. I did the best I could. Why do you have to torture me?

I was super angry because why are they suing me? They see that it's a perfect blood gas. They see that my heart strip was normal. And they got these two weaselly doctors who do this for a living to say that they would have sectioned the patient an hour earlier. Two doctors. One doesn't even practice OB anymore. And the other is someone who historically has done these cases against doctors.

So you've got two unscrupulous people saying that I did something wrong. I had to go through that process. It took a year of my life. I had to meet with attorneys endlessly. I had to go over my story again and again and again. I had to be deposed. I will never be the same after this. I guess when I got the subpoena or the intent to sue, I felt like maybe I really did something wrong.

So I was living in this duality of you're a terrible person that hurts babies and then you're a strong female physician who did everything right this time. Like you might not always do everything right, but this time you did and you just had a bad outcome. You go back and forth, you're crying and you're trying to exercise to get through it and you're going to therapy and it makes you insane.

And it makes your family insane and your loved ones insane. But honestly, I was so ashamed it was happening. I didn't even tell most people. I didn't tell my mom. I didn't tell my teenagers. I didn't tell my ex-husband. People at the hospital, there's only a handful of people I even told because I was so ashamed. I think I have PTSD even from the deposition. Like, I'll never forget it.

I cried the entire deposition. I don't know, because the parents were in the room staring at me the whole time. And there were only eight of us in there.

The hatred in the dad's eyes was like palpable. And coming from a person that's like a people pleaser and I want everyone to like me and I don't want to do anything wrong and I'm very straight and narrow and I'm very careful, I just wanted to say, please believe me. I love all the patients I take care of, including you. It just was falling on deaf ears. Grief is weird. And they were stricken with grief.

Because I was getting so much feedback that was telling me that my care was standard of care, I was definitely more mad than sad. I remember when I was sitting with the lawyers, like just saying, I was so angry. I hated the world. I didn't want to take care of patients. I thought all the patients were enemies. Every time I walked into a room, I'm like, are they going to sue me too?

Thank God for therapists because I got better with time, but it was devastating to go to work and just think the world's against you. And that all the nurses are looking at you because they know you got sued. And some of those nurses maybe don't have all the clinical knowledge that you have and wonder if she did do something wrong. I'm mad at the world and I'm closing in

I'm isolating. I'm doing all the wrong things. And then I feel horrible for this family about their baby. I'm like, how can you even be mad? How can you be mad? They don't have a baby. You just are going through hell, but they don't have a baby. So I just felt it was kind of like, how dare you be mad? And so I couldn't even feel what I wanted to feel.

And that's a horrible place to be. Like, I wanted, I needed to be angry. I needed to let myself have that. It was really, really difficult. It was really hard for me to go in the call room. In fact, the shoes that I wore that night, the hospital shoes that I wore that night, I put under the bed in that call room and I've never put them on again. I can't even have them on my feet.

If I can't have the fetal monitors on in my call room at all times, I would freak out. How come this isn't working? Who do I have to call? Why can't I see the babies? My behavior was irrational. I would get mad at nurses and stuff very easily.

I just thought, who am I going to hurt now? What's going to happen next? I think if I wasn't a single mom at that time taking care of a daughter of my own, I probably would have quit my job. I ended up leaving that hospital because I can't work there. It was traumatizing. I still have PTSD, but it's nothing like it was.

If I'm very tired, I still feel like everyone's going to sue me and my life is over and I don't know anything and I fooled everyone. You know, I've always had that imposter syndrome where I didn't really deserve to be a doctor and I somehow slid through the hoops and I accidentally got in and ha ha, see, you're not good enough to do it and we're going to show you. That stayed with me for so long after this catastrophe. Yeah.

With PTSD, being a physician, I think what I had to do is I have to compartmentalize in order to keep on doing it. I had to be like, this is a strip. It is the heartbeat going across the paper. It does not belong to a living thing. It is something I'm interpreting. So I almost had to dehumanize it in order to keep going.

I don't know if I'm ever going to be exactly right, but I still love it. I still love those babies. You know, I hope that I'm still touching people's lives in a positive way. My attorney called me the week before the trial was set and said they wanted to settle for a nominal fee. And I didn't have a choice.

The plaintiff attorney realized that we had a very good case. My attorneys realized that we also had a baby who didn't survive. So you really don't want to take the gamble going to a jury, even if they can prove I did everything exactly right. So even if I had wanted to go fight my case because I thought I was right, I'll never get my day in court because the insurance company was paying for the lawyer.

they settled. And so in my mind, I lost. I was relieved that I didn't have to go through trial because I thought it would break my spirit as a human being. But I was also disappointed because I thought, now I'll never ever get to undo this. I'll never have a clean slate. Every time I work anywhere, I have to say I got sued and that a baby died. Every time. It's like having a criminal record.

Every time I fill out paperwork to get a new license, I have to tell my story again. It's like the scarlet letter. It'll always be something that tears me into anger and tears me into guilt, tears me into sadness. It's just a matter of being able to contain the emotion and to move along the road and to still try to find happiness in what I do because I love what I do. And I hate that that's been taken from me.

It's getting better and better. It's just how it's changed me. I don't want to give my body and my soul and my mind to these patients who really don't give a shit about me and in a heartbeat will sue me

Even my friends and family say things like, well, that doctor didn't know what they were doing. And oh, we could have sued them. And I'm just, it makes my blood curdle. It's like, really? These people go to school forever to take care of you. And you want to sue them as soon as, you know, they look at you sideways. Like, why does it have to be that way? I am so much better than I was. I work at a hospital where the nurses adore me.

It's very busy. We have a lot of fun. And I'm starting to feel more relaxed, finally. And I feel like a real sense of camaraderie with the people I work with and a sense of mutual respect. I feel good.

I have a good work-life balance. I'm engaged and happy. I've got three stepkids to be and a beautiful teenage daughter of my own. And I have dark nights for sure, but there are few and far between. It's changed me a lot. It's definitely made me jaded in a way I wish I wasn't. It's also made me stronger.

I hope that I can help someone else. I hope that if another doctor goes through this, I will welcome them with open arms and listen to them and cry with them. And maybe I'll get some healing from that too. I think the hardest part was doubting myself so significantly.

wondering if I should never have been a doctor, wondering if I was just like an imposter that had no business doing this and really believing it for a while. It was like the universe's way of saying, ha ha, I told you so. I told you it was always your fault. And now in the biggest, hugest way, we'll show you that it really is your fault.

Having to look that in the face as an adult and think about whether or not you're worth anything, you start to spiral like, oh, I'm a bad doctor. I'm a bad mother. I was a bad wife. I'm a bad daughter. I'm a bad sister. I mean, you just felt unworthy of everything. Unworthy, like I shouldn't be going to work. And so I have that person fighting with the little girl that wants to be accepted and told that it's not her fault.

I know now that bad things can happen to anyone. I had a doctor come to me recently who had an intrauterine fetal demise after sending a patient home. It was a fluke. It shouldn't have happened, and it did. I could see myself 10 years ago saying, oh, maybe she should have done this or this in the office, and da-da-da. And now, and I can say, you know what? People make decisions all the time. They do the best they can.

And bad things happen sometimes through no fault of their own. It's okay. And honestly, even if it was my fault, because there's going to be some times that it is your fault. We're human beings. It has to be okay to be valuable. And you hope that a mistake would never turn something so catastrophic like this. But we can't hold doctors up to some crazy perfection that is impossible.

There always is going to be the dark nights where I think about the baby and I know the baby's name and I say it. I know in my heart that I'm a genuine, loving, caring person and that I deserve forgiveness. I have to work on it every day, but I know I deserve it. And I hope one day that family forgives me.

I feel like I can handle anything that walks in the door in labor and delivery. Whatever happens, I can do it. And it's okay if things don't go perfectly. But so much of it is out of our control. There's not always someone to blame. Life just happens sometimes and there's not a lot of control. You just do the best you can. Keep your nose to the grind. It's all you can do. And I think I've learned to let it go more.

As much as I hate to admit it, the whole experience was a bit healing for me. I think it's made me a better person. And it's not like it happened and all of a sudden I'm full of confidence and blah, blah, blah. Like that's not it. It's it happened. And I realized some hard truths about life. If you feel terrible and you feel like everything's your fault and you don't believe in yourself, it doesn't matter who believes in you.

The buck really does stop with you. You need to believe that it's not your fault and you need to believe in yourself. That's a very important thing. Maybe it's important for a 10-year-old, but it's also important for a 53-year-old who never felt that way before. And I realized with this experience that the only person that can tell me it's not my fault is me. From Wondery, you're listening to This Is Actually Happening. If

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I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls. With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

You know, it's hysteria. It's all in your head. It's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since The Witches of Salem? Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.