(no subject)

[sythyry]

In Which Levande is a Monster [12 Chirreb 4261]

Thery died, of course.

Which is to say, she died a dozen and some times, and got dragged back to life each time. Which is rather a lot for a medical matter. It's a pretty high penalty for doorwaying, even.

(As an aside: The baby didn't die at all, which was the point. I imagine Thery could have gotten away with only two or three deaths if they didn't mind having the baby die once or twice too. But dying before you're properly born is, I gather, a very bad thing.)

Sometime an hour or three before the sun went out, Chrentothany came out of Thery's room. We were waiting in the lobby of the Pavilion of Splendor, trying not to look nervous, and trying not to look at the other gang of a dozen or so people waiting for the fate of their husband who was being eaten by yarthas, or, perhaps, being saved from the same.

We surmised that it was a bad sign when Chrentothany tried to slink past us without saying anything. He surely recognized Levande and me, if nothing else. We surely recognized him, too, and Levande arrested him by means partly verbal, partly physical, and partly moral.

Chrentothany:"No, the situation is not so good. I have done what a healer can do; I am out of cley. I have left her in the hands of a nurse, who will save the baby if she can be saved."

Levande:"You didn't use the ritual I bought you."

Chrentothany:"No -- " and lapsed into some incomprehensible medical jargon about why not.

Levande:"If you had more cley, could you do more?"

Chrentothany:"Well, I could do more of the same. It might suffice, it might not." More medical jargon followed.

The ensuing argument was rather bitter. Chrentothany's side was that Thery had used up an entire expert healer for an entire day, which is pretty much all that anyone short of greater nobility or greater wizardry gets. (Given that Chrentothany can typically save, oh, two dozen people in a day, or half that if he binds spells with the day's leftover cley, using a full day's power on one person is a poor economy; using several days' is even poorer.) Levande's was that more could be done to save Thery.

Levande:[finally]"It seems to me that you have two choices. You can get more cley, or you can get another healer to take over where you have failed."

Chrentothany:"Neither one is appropriate."

Levande:"Then I present a third choice. Sythyry and I will persecute and torment you to the fullest scope of my ability for so long as you are in Vheshrame Mene, or in those city-states where the word of the Duke of Vheshrame is heavy. And if you seek to escape more fully than that, I daresay the gentlebeast who attends on Sythyry will work a quicker and crueller punishment than any I could come up with."

I was a bit disconcerted to be added to the list of punishers, especially using Vae as a weapon. I couldn't argue with the sentiment though. Though it's really not a good idea to bully a healer. Even one in his despairs at being about to lose a patient.

Within the third part of an hour, a second healer -- Dathrynne something-or-other, a Herethroy co-lover -- was attending Thery.

Before the sun had entirely gone out:

1. Thery and Macropodia Elegans were definitively going to survive.
2. Thery's belly was thoroughly ripped apart.
3. Thery had died enough times so that ordinary belly-healing spells weren't going to help much, and she was going to need two or three weeks (!) of further medical attention.
4. Macropodia Elegans was a little tiny slip of a Rassimel girl, named Ficina. We got to see her for about a minute, wrapped in blankets, in Yarwain's arms.
5. Yarwain didn't look in much better shape than Thery, except that he was walking and intact and all the blood on him was hers. But he looked quite happy. He had been a tad worried, I gather, though not as berserkly worried as Thery.
6. I might admit that occasionally mammalian reproduction gets close to being as awful as Zi Ri reproduction. I would probably hurt more than Thery did, though I wouldn't be in nearly as bad shape afterwards.

Which was a distinct improvement over a few hours before.

The remaining problem: Thery wasn't going to be any good for anything except bleeding for nearly a month. Yarwain can't lactate. Not nearly as bad as the last problem, but, well, Ficina won't do well on just babywine for a month.

Comments

[lunarennui.livejournal.com]

*whew*

i was VERY worried about thery! thank whichever god you think most appropriate that levande cares enough to be a monster!

[melskunk.livejournal.com]

Thery wasn't going to be any good for anything except bleeding for nearly a month. Yarwain can't lactate. Not nearly as bad as the last problem, but, well, Ficina won't do well on just babywine for a month.

I wouldn't worry, Sythyry. I know YOU'RE not a mammal so wouldn't know, but mammals proper occasionally have this problem, so they'll probably get a wetnurse (a lactating female who can also feed the baby). Heck, at least in our relm, it used to be in use as well for mothers who, for reasons of rank, wouldn't have time to nurse their children (here, you couldn't very well have the nobility have a kid stuck to them when conducting matters of state).
Nowadays, we have a rich sort of babywine developed almost 100 years ago by doctors who were concerned about children not getting enough nutrition from milk if their mothers were very poor or unhealthy, which is mostly perfectly healthy and certainly a good subsitute if you can only sit around and bleed. Even a father can nurse a child in those circumstances.

Unless.. is there some sort of objection in your relm to wetnurses?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I'm not a mammal, but I'm a mammal-lover, and I do know about wet-nurses. We thought that the problem was going to be finding one, which should be routine enough, but that's without the countess.

Babywine isn't a substitute for milk. It's wine with honey and pondygreen and powdered beetles, which mammalian babies are given as a tonic. The baby can get only so much of it -- being drunk isn't good for a baby. Better to feed the baby some other kind of milk than too much babywine.

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

So, ghoul that I am, I really am curious to know: Did anyone ever determine at last what exactly was wrong with Thery anyway? I plead ignorance on the biological specifics but I gather it's unusual for Rassimel to explode at the terminus of their reproductive cycle.

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Good gods!

I'm not often in the "you people could learn from us" camp, but that's atrocious! Haven't your people ever heard of a cesarian section?! Your healers need to learn more non-magical techniques! Giving up because you've run out of cley?! That's preposterous!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Bard, who knows a bit more than Sythyry, answers: That's what the nurse was doing -- Chrentothany was obscure about it in his first line, but that's what he meant. It's really not a good idea though. The process and even the moment of birth are times of spiritual and symbolic significance, and, on a high-magic world, that significance counts for quite a bit. With a C-section, things that ought to happen at birth might not happen properly, and the child often winds up with defects of the mind and magerium. C-sections don't have major side effects on Earth afaik, but on WT the results can be as bad as Down's Syndrome. So the high-status honor-conscious healer took care to be out of cley at the point when it had to be done, and left it to the nurse. Any birth defects would go on her reputation, much less so on his.]

[And, hey, why did you think that the World Tree was a nice place?]

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

Such techniques may not exist. In an environment where magical techniques are widely available to the point where they represent the native technology, there's little impetus to develop comparatively unusual techniques. In the same vein, such techniques may exist but in a far more primitive, thus inefficient, thus dangerous state for procedures such as this. Barring the appearance of an Aesculapius, someone would have to invent whole-cloth a large body of purely mundane medicine.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[Some revision to get some biology right -- I am sick, RL, and not paying full attention.]

Thery didn't explode. She was cut open, and Ficina was unwedged from the very dangerous position she had gotten herself into.

This medical procedure is very risky to the baby, though. It can causes defects of the mind and magerium, sometimes quite bad ones. Chrentothany didn't want to do it; it would reflect poorly on him. He left the nurse, and, later, the alternate healer to do it. Ficina shows no obvious signs of damage, though we won't know for sure 'til she's casting spells in all her arts, which will be a while.


Forgive me; I didn't want to pay too much attention to the medical details. Very loosely: Rassimel ordinarily have a couple of bone struts in their lower abdomen to support various gloopy bits of entrails. [Thereby providing somewhat better internal balance and preventing the back problems that plague, well, me. -bb] In Thery, these struts are misplaced, lower and I gather sharper than in most Rassimel, placed in a way that causes a variety of nastiness as the womb swells. E.g., the struts can pierce the womb and its contents; they can break; they can rip the intestines or other organs. I think there are some subsidiary medical and spiritual issues in Thery's case too, for extra confusion.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

[OOC again -- Some nonmagical techniques exist, and in some cases they're preferred to the magical ones, but on the whole primes are a bit spoiled by over-reliance on magic.]

[cowboy_r, you might know the RL analog of that. Are modern human doctors routinely trained in alternative procedures that don't rely on modern technology -- say, how to perform surgery without electricity? I suppose that some ought to be, especially ones trained for working in emergencies or on the battlefield or in third-world countries. But if I go to a major NYC hospital, will the doctor know how to work without power?]

[The case is not exactly parallel, of course. If a human doctor knew the power were going off at 6:00 p.m., and had extensive control of the day's plan, he wouldn't schedule surgery to start at 5:45.]

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

[Good grief, Bard, you seem to get ill as often as I do.]

Interesting. Explosion being a minor exagerration on my part, of course.

I won't say I blame you for glossing over the details; I find no great desire to get acquainted with any of my own friends' viscera either.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Stay very worried, if you please. Obsessed Rassimel can do good things, and they can do bad things, but they cannot tell the difference. Or will not at least.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I have a cute 20-month-old disease vector with a vocabulary of several hundred words!

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

That is more or less what I was trying in my more-verbose-than-strictly-necessary way to say.

[lunarennui.livejournal.com]

eep!

hrrrrm. perhaps iska could be induced to lactate and could nurse ficina while yarwain focussed on keeping thery well?

*continues to worry*

[yotogi.livejournal.com]

An exceedingly cute one!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I must take a nap before posting the second half of the story. You'll see why.

[rowyn]

gang of a dozen or so people waiting for the fate of their husband who was being eaten by yarthas

Eaten or possibly being save from a yarthas? O_o

I'm glad Thery survived and that the baby seems all right so far! Eeep.

[brennabat.livejournal.com]

Well that's a relief!

Still, I do worry about Thery's quality of life after this. She sounds like ribbons held together by magic! I know the child may suffer serious problems from this type of extraction, but what about Thery?

(This story makes me wonder about another World Tree problem: "healer-hogging." "My husband died because you and your money took all that the healers had!" -- sounds like story material to me, especially if quite a few people suffered for it.)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

We were relieved, to be sure. And glad of the Countess' ferocity.

She's not particularly healthy at the moment, no. It will take her several weeks to recover, which is a very long time by our standards. I imagine she will carry scars of some kind or another.

I don't know if anyone who needed a healer and could afford one couldn't get one because of what Levande did. It could have happened. Healer-hogging does happen now and then, which is why the Healer's Guild has limits.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Ah. That explains why he was so resistant to 'getting more cley', which from what I've heard is fairly straightforwards and could have been done right there in the hallway with Levande. }:P

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

I've been researching our version of your babywine, we call it "baby formula." I was hoping I could find something of some use, since you can raise a baby on it for several months.

Unfortunately, the commercial (think professionally created) and home created recipes all use specific extracts and oils and water with this-or-that boiled in it. I can say the word soy milk from soybeans or rice milk or carrot juice or maple syrup, but none of those things are likely to MEAN anything to you... even when you've almost certainly got analogues there on your world.

I *would* suggest making somethign drinkable out of subtances known for their nutritive properties and ease of digestion. Except I have no idea if that is even good advice. Our biology is based on incredibly complex chemistry (alchemy) and we've got every reason in the world to think that protein chains, carbohydrates, and chemical energy storage in sugars don't even exist there. Gah! It makes my head hurt. I sense a lot of "it works this way because of the will of Insert God Name Here."

I hope a wet nurse won't be a problem.

Loxley

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Babywine isn't baby formula; it's a tonic. We use milk cut with stock if we have to feed babies for any length of time. Obviously it's a worse choice than just giving extra babywine for the first few days, or the healers would have done it. I don't know why.

[Bard guesses that it's something related to the general World Tree preference for quality over quantity.]

[niss-the-ai.livejournal.com]

It sounds like "small beer," apparently a standard drink here when clean water supplies were rare.
The idea of "healer-hogging" does sound interesting, given the state of our own medical system. More-or-less, the invention of more-and-more effective treatments that require more-and-more resources.

[collie13.livejournal.com]

C-sections don't have major side effects on Earth afaik...

The only major side effect I've heard of is the surgery weakens the entire abdominal area such that the mother can't give birth "normally" any more, and must rely on C-secs from that point on. I heard this some time ago, however, so maybe we've been smart and lucky, and have gotten better since then?

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Goodness gracious, that's a lot of dying... I wonder if that matches our monstrous expectations of 'near-death experiences', which I gather involves seeing your entire life flash before your eyes, and going through a dark tunnel and seeing a very bright light on the other side?

It's good to hear the respective patients are alive, at least!

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

I've known several people who have given birth normally after a C-section, so yes... we're apparently getting better at it.

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Well, it depends. Many terrestrial healers are in fact studying lower-tech methods of healing, including Chinese medicine. Likewise, many terrestrial healers believe that being able to perform their duties with minimal invasion is a good thing.

However, there certainly are spoiled brats who would never think of working in less than optimal conditions here, just as there are in the world tree.

[collie13.livejournal.com]

Oh, good, I'm glad to hear that. Thank you for the update.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

RL, it's reasonably common; my sister-in-law did it, for one. It depends on what the C-section incision was like and how it healed, I think.