Circumcision......

Yet again its been a very interesting and busy week, packed with lots of surgeries. Yesterday I watched the op of a prolapsed uterus which apparently is now very unusual to see because people don't tend to have 10 children at home any more! The lady seems fine today. I also got to see an inguinal hernia operation on an older man. The afternoon was veeeeery cool - I got to help Dr. Rajulan with a CIRCUMCISION! I think the most difficult part was actually putting the gloves on in the correct manner - I really struggled! I had to dab the blood which squirted out when the incision was made so that the doctor could see what he was doing and support the penis so it wouldn't flop over. Then as the doctor knotted each stitch, I had to snip the thread. Was very exciting!!!!!

This morning we watched a really interesting surgery. A little 3 year old boy has got Hyposperias which is when the urethral opening is at the base of the penis, which means he can urinate ok but he'd never be able to have children if it wasn't rectified. Apparently six months ago they moved the opening to half way up the penis and today we saw it being moved to just under the glans. He'll now have to wait 10 years until he can have the final op, moving it to the tip. In the afternoon we did ward rounds and I felt quite upset because there were loads of cases where I asked the doctor how he was going to treat the patient and he'd say "well, for this spiral fracture we need to do surgery, but the family is too poor so we'll have to find a way of making him feel comfortable." This is an op that cost the equivalent of 175 quid...