oh the horror, the horror. today, i watched as a doctor stretched, clamped, and sliced through a poor baby’s foreskin. it was my first time watching a circumcision– and it was quite an ordeal [think: the netter slide with the millions of clamps pulling skin every which way]. the poor boy screamed, cried, and struggled against his restraints from the beginning of the dorsal nerve block to the insertion of the plastibell to the tieing and slicing of the skin. what’s worse, he had adhesions all around the penis, and the doctor had stick a probe in and remove all of them. by the end of it all, i felt a bit ill.

the rest of the day wasn’t quite as traumatic. i learned to do a head to toe assesment of a baby– which included palpating the fontanelles, listening to the heart, lungs, and belly, taking a pulse in the armpit, and taking the temperature. my first baby had a recently closed PDA [yay for indocin!] and a very noticable heart murmur from a narrowing of his pulmonary artery. my other baby was a teeny tiny girl on CPAP with an OG tube and a lopsided head. it was like one side decided to be “bert” and the other side, “ernie”.

later in the day, i got to hang out with my favorite baby, and remove his PICC line, feed him, and rock him to sleep. i’ll be doing a short presentation on PIH because of him. woo.

before i left, a 9 pound monster of a baby came in after a vaginal delivery with vacuum extraction. the poor guy had a big ol’ lump on the back of his head. i wonder if it’ll go down by tomorrow. we’ll see.

tomorrow… life as a respiratory therapist.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 28th, 2005 at 8:07 pm by mi and is filed under medical school. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.