'He's got magic hands': Labrador doctor retires after 50 years of delivering babies
Dr. Wieslaw Rawluk lost track long ago of how many babies he's delivered in his 50-year career, which started in Poland and ended in Happy Valley-Goose Bay last month.
The number is in the thousands, but it's impossible to say for sure.
"The best part of the job is [hearing] this crying, beautiful, pink baby. That's the best of the best. And suddenly, happiness all around."
Rawluk came to Labrador in 1989, expecting to stay for just a few months.
Instead, he fell in love with the place, and with a midwife, before becoming one of the best-known and most-respected doctors in the region.
"He's very compassionate and caring," said registered nurse and colleague Nicole Boutilier. "He just puts his whole heart into everything he does."
In his decades as the only obstetrician and gynecologist in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Rawluk developed a reputation among his patients in central and coastal Labrador as a kind doctor with a genuine warmth for women and babies.
"I think there's a lot that I have learned," said Dr. Gabe Woollam, Labrador-Grenfell Health's vice-president of medical services.
"He's been dedicated to a single community for many, many years, and that's something we'd like to see more of."
Rawluk began his stint with Labrador-Grenfell Health in St. Anthony a couple years before coming to Happy Valley-Goose Bay.
The two reasons he decided to stay: "country and people," Rawluk said.
He quickly became enamoured with the Labrador lifestyle of hunting, fishing, and snowmobiling. He admired the cultures of the Innu and Inuit, who showed him another way of life.
"I really, really like to work with these people," he said.
3 decades on call
Working as a specialist in a remote region is demanding. Rawluk has effectively been on call for the last 30 years. He once delivered a baby on his way to midnight mass on Christmas Eve.
"It's part of the job," he said. "You just have to live with that and pretend that you're normal."
It's not the common practice at every hospital, but at the Labrador Health Centre in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, family physicians typically take the lead in labour and delivery.
"That can be scary," Woollam said, explaining why some general practitioners are reticent about working in the maternity ward.
"Having somebody at the other end of the phone, or five minutes away by car, makes doing that kind of work much more enjoyable."
Whenever there are complicated births, Rawluk takes the lead. And there are many.
Mothers with diabetes, high blood pressure, addictions. Babies coming too soon, in the wrong position. Caesarean sections. Multiple births.
"It is a very, very thin line between absolute happiness and absolute disaster," Rawluk said.
'He's got magic hands'
Dr. Robert Forsey, a family physician at the Labrador Health Centre, said Rawluk knows how to ease the tension for both doctors and patients in high-stress situations.
"He's wonderful to have around in a crisis. He's got magic hands," Forsey said.
"He can do things that many of us can't do. So there's a real talent there."
In a few instances, Rawluk has delivered multiple generations of the same family.
Just a few months ago, Forsey, Rawluk, and a soon-to-be-grandmother found themselves chatting in the delivery room.
"It turned out he'd delivered the father of the baby," Forsey laughed. The three of them tried to remember what music was playing in the operating room when her son, now almost a father himself, was delivered by C-section.
"I think it was Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong," Forsey said.
On Turkey Thursdays at the hospital, cafeteria staff will still save turkey necks for Rawluk. They expect to see him around, although maybe not every day.
He's not on call anymore, but not giving up his practice completely. He still offers cancer-screening and contraception clinics.
"It's not as flashy," Rawluk said, "I will try to help a little bit."
Rawluk said Labrador lags behind other parts of Canada when it comes to cervical cancer screening, and he hopes to change that.
He has mixed feelings about retirement, which started in December.
It's hard to adjust to a normal routine after so many years working around the clock. But he takes with him fond memories of his patients.
"I have a few newborn babies named after me or my mother. Her name is Helena, which is a little bit easier than Wieslaw."
