4/9/09
In the midst of applying to be a state District Court judge, Española lawyer Sheri Raphaelson went on a tropical vacation. And her hosts made sure she stayed in the nicest hotel in town.
“That meant I had a bathroom in my room, with cold water,” Raphaelson said. “To have indoor running water, even though it was cold, was really amazing.”
Raphaelson had arrived in rural Uganda to deliver babies, followed by a brief wildlife safari with her family. In addition to practicing law she is a licensed midwife, and she wanted to replicate an experience she had had in Jamaica seven years earlier.
“I get bored just sitting on a beach,” Raphaelson said. “I love delivering babies.”
Raphaelson left for Uganda Dec. 18 and returned Jan. 12, exactly one week before a state judicial nominating commission nominated her to the Tierra Amarilla judgeship for the First Judicial District, from among six applicants. Raphaelson has since been appointed by Gov. Bill Richardson and will be sworn in April 17.
She can expect to work long hours in her new post, but probably nothing compared to the midwives she was relieving in Uganda. Raphaelson said when she arrived for one shift, the only other midwife on duty looked around and announced that she was going to lie in bed for the day.
“It was ridiculous to leave me in charge, but this was probably the first day off she’d had in months,” Raphaelson said.
Raphaelson worked at a different hospital on Christmas, and her presence allowed two other midwives and a technician to celebrate the holiday, if only briefly.
“They had cooked Christmas dinner for themselves, and the only reason they could sit down and eat it was because I said I could stay in the maternity ward,” she said.
The Ugandan patients were just as stoic as the staff. In a country where many people make their living through subsistence farming, expectant mothers would often walk to the hospital while in labor, she said.
And at the hospital in the capital city of Kampala, Raphaelson saw a pregnant woman step down from the back of a motorcycle taxi and enter the ward with a large bag of supplies.
“She walks in the front door and was in labor,” Raphaelson said. “I checked her and she was (dilated) 8.5 centimeters. She told me how sorry she was that she was making a mess.”
And in a country where cold water is a luxury, medical supplies are really hard to come by. Raphaelson said she was repeatedly stunned by the lack of basic supplies and services in the poor East African nation. One of the hospitals she worked in had the materials to stitch up wounds, but no one on staff knew how to use them. The second hospital she visited had a doctor who could stitch but had no materials.
She said women who come to give birth are required to bring their own sheet of plastic to lie on, along with rubber gloves for the midwife to wear and a razor blade to cut the cord.
To clamp the cord, midwives tear off a thin strip of latex from the cuff of the just-used glove.
Raphaelson’s experience has also given her new appreciation for the simple life-saving measures that American parents take for granted. In Uganda premature babies die, and there is no tube-feeding available for babies who cannot suckle. Raphaelson said she even astounded the Ugandan midwives with her skills by delivering a healthy nine-pound baby.
“Normally those babies die,” she said. “They just don’t know how to get them out. It was bizarre. It was sad.”