What does a Homotoxicologist do in the Delivery Suite?

© Copyright 2003 by Bruce H. Shelton, M.D., M.D.(h), DiHOM & HEEL Inc. USA Medical Director, USA
(Explore Issue: Volume 12, Number 5)

My oldest daughter was born when I was a senior in Medical School in New York City in 1970. I had already been through my OB service, so I had helped and/or delivered 100 babies by the time my wife went into labor with our first child. Unfortunately we lived in New Jersey, near our hometowns, and we elected to have our child in a private hospital in Hackensack.

Well, here I was in my scrubs and while coat from Medical School, but a senior medical student was still MISTER Shelton to them, and not the DOCTOR Shelton they called me just across the river. Here was my wife in labor with our first child, and THEY MADE ME SIT IN THE WAITING ROOM.

I appealed to our Doctor, but hospital rules were hospital rules, so that I couldn’t go into the delivery area, which included the labor rooms as well as the Delivery Room. I wasn’t allowed near my wife. The humiliation was so overwhelming that I actually left the hospital and went down the road to my mother’s office, about a mile away, and learned of my new child over the phone when my wife called me from the recovery room.

I went back to the hospital immediately to finally be united with my family.

Our next two daughters were born in Phoenix, Arizona, when I was a second year resident in Family Practice, and of course, I was in attendance in the delivery suite, but the whole rest of the family was in the waiting room. This was repeated two years later when our last daughter was born, as I was out in private practice by then, and I was with my wife in the delivery suite with everyone else outside.

TIMES HAVE DEFINITELY CHANGED in the ensuing thirty years.