Dr. Rana Awdish was a leading doctor at her hospital in Detroit. She was seven months pregnant and on top of the world. She had just finished a prestigious medical fellowship, and the long journey through medical school was finally coming to an end. To mark her success, she was out for a celebratory dinner with her best friend. Suddenly, she had this excruciating abdominal pain that was unlike anything she had ever experienced. Her doctor brain was spinning, trying to figure it out. Was it the appendix? No, the pain wasn’t in the right place. Something deep inside told her that whatever it was, it was killing her. She contacted her husband, who picked her up and rushed her to the hospital: her hospital, the Henry Ford.

At the hospital she tried to explain that it was something serious, and that she needed immediate surgery. But the doctors didn’t listen. They said she was pregnant and had to go somewhere else. She looked at her husband as if to say “If I die, it’s because they sent me to the wrong place. Now I’m going to die. And that’s why.”

Everyone was worried about the baby, and they did a scan. Rana immediately realised that the baby’s heart was not beating. She collapsed. They rushed her in for emergency surgery, but they couldn’t find enough blood. In her stupor she overheard them say things like, “she’s trying to die on us.”

Then, the weirdest thing happened: an out-of-body experience. Suddenly she could see herself on the table. She could see the team that was getting ready to operate. “I’m probably already dead,” she thought. Oh, my God. Then suddenly a sense of peace overcame her. She felt very expansive, like she was part of everything and detached at the same time.

In that moment, faced with just two options, she decided to come back, and she did. She survived the emergency surgery. She had to learn how to walk and speak. Along the way, she learned what it was like to be a patient, and it was not easy. The insurance company falsely charged her for resuscitating the baby that didn’t live. One doctor refused to give her enough painkillers. Another doctor said that if they didn’t get a new liver quickly she’d be in the hospital forever.

Inspired by her experiences, she now insists on care as the heart of medicine. As the director of the pulmonary hypertension program at the Henry Ford Hospital she has introduced compassion to the heart of the hospital.

Learn more about Rana’s story on the MindFrame: Where Shift Happens podcast.

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