The Better Half On the Genetic Superiority of Women - Sharon Moalem Page 0,2
one of the most important indicators of potential success in dealing with the rough-and-tumble adversities of life comes down to one simple thing, as I was just about to discover.
After I examined Jordan and Emily, Rebecca led me down a long hallway and into a quiet room where I could spend some time with their parents. Hospitals often lack the physical space for concerned family to congregate comfortably. We were lucky to have a room for talks like this.
I sat down with Sandra and Thomas to discuss our care plan for their twins, but before too long they were telling me about their journey to parenthood. After so many failed attempts, numerous rounds of hormone injections, and even in vitro fertilization, they had all but given up on having children of their own.
And then it finally happened. They were overjoyed at finding themselves pregnant, but tried not to get too excited at first. They knew from personal experience how quickly good news could turn to bad. But as the days and weeks went by, they gradually allowed themselves to believe that this pregnancy might actually lead to happiness. When the sonogram showed that Sandra and Thomas were pregnant with not only one child but two, their dream of having a family at last seemed to be coming true.
And just when they let themselves take a breath, trouble struck again. They went from imagining what it was going to be like to have their quiet Brooklyn apartment filled with the lively sounds of two young children to hoping and praying that their twins would survive.
Rebecca had me paged late one night because she wasn’t happy with how Jordan was looking. Her years of experience had taught her this: her instincts were almost always right. Having taken care of the twins since their admission, I found myself looking forward to seeing them—they had been changing so quickly from the first day they were admitted. So this news from Rebecca was upsetting. It was true that after two weeks in the NICU, Emily and Jordan had been thankfully breathing well on their own, but I knew that they weren’t out of danger yet.
On my way to Jordan’s incubator, I tried not to get tangled in all the wires hooked up to the machines that were helping this child along. Rebecca, after having gone through the same routine that I did every time I went in, without fail—washing hands, gowning, donning gloves and mask—met me at his bedside. We both knew that things can be precarious for patients this young. Rebecca warned me then that I should prepare for the worst in Jordan’s case. And she was right. Twelve hours later, Jordan passed away.
I ran into Rebecca a few years later, this time in the hospital cafeteria. I had moved to a different institution and had come back to give a lecture. After so many years of devoted service, Rebecca was getting ready for retirement at the end of the month and looking forward to spending more time with her own seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. I told her that my experience with her in the NICU that night was still very fresh in my mind.
“Yes, they never leave you,” she said. “I still remember every one of their faces.” She reached for her coffee to take a sip.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” I said to her. “That night in the NICU—how did you know about Jordan? What was it that made you think he wasn’t likely to make it?”
“I’m not sure … but once you do this job for so long, you develop a feel for things. And so much of what we do is a judgment call. Sometimes it’s even something that the lab results or testing don’t always show you initially. Maybe it’s just intuition. One thing’s for sure, though: in the NICU, it’s almost always so much harder for boys than for girls. And I guess it’s not just in the NICU … I lost my husband twelve years ago now, and most of my girlfriends are widows too.”
I was quiet while I reflected on what Rebecca had just shared with me. I couldn’t help thinking about my grandmother and the dearth of men at the far end of the human aging trajectory. It was as if everything I had ever researched and experienced clinically was coming together at that moment, forming a crisp question out of the fog of years of study.