![]() Catherine and Reg, both devout Christians, believed moreover in trying to heal the whole woman: “We don’t just treat the hole in the bladder,” as Catherine once put it, “we treat the whole patient with love and tender care, literacy and numeracy classes, a brand-new dress and money to travel home.” These days, obstetric fistulae are almost entirely avoidable and usually straightforward to fix, with life-changing effect. She finds herself incontinent, sometimes doubly so, and then, in many countries, shunned women in this state can live alone and rejected for decades. If there is no midwife or hospital, the labour continues for days, until the baby dies, shrinks and can be expelled the pressure of labour tears the woman’s bladder, vagina, uterus, and often rectum as well. Obstetric fistulae occur in women who endure obstructed deliveries, for all the myriad reasons that these occur the world over: because the baby is breech, or too big, or tangled in the umbilical cord, or, if the mother is too young, because her body is unready. ![]()
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