Skip to main content

So this is what a circ is.

"Why did you become a doctor?" I asked Dr. Harkins. "Because I love doing circumcisions so much." He answered. He shot me a sideways glance before making his first incision. I laughed. The baby struggled against his velcro straps and screamed. "Alright, dude, you hate this; we get it." He said as he tightened the clamp.

Labor and delivery is nothing like the emergency department. It was much slower. The walls were nice and homey. The nurses were like family. Everybody was very nice and approachable. It was very boring.

Every patient was the exact same. Pregnant female. Back pain, abdominal pain, contractions. Oh, you're having a baby soon? I wasn't expecting that! And everyone was very protective of their vaginas. Ma'am, your vagina is about to be ripped open by a miniature human in the most disgusting of human processes coupled with a couple other very disgusting bodily processes, I thought. Any dignity you're trying to hold onto now is going out the window in about an hour. I smiled and stepped out of the room while the nurse did her cervical inspections.

Three vaginal births and two circumcisions later I was stepping into the C-section room. "Oh there you are," Dr. Sorin said. "You can stand right here and we'll get started." He made the first incision into her belly next to her old scar. The fat was exposed and soon parted, which exposed the peritineum. "This is the abdominal lining." He said to me as he sliced it open. He pulled the skin and fat up and put his hand inside of the patient, moving his hand all around her abdominal cavity. What, I thought. What am I watching? He sliced into the uterus and pulled the baby out. The surgery technician moved in with the suction tube, sucking blood away. Blood shot through a tube between my legs. I jumped in the air as red shot out in a line against the white floor.

"Shit!" I blurted. "No, that's blood." Dr. Sorin said.

After the baby and placenta were delivered, he pulled her uterus out. "Come check this out." He said. He showed me her fallopian tubes and ovaries. Is this really happening? I thought. "Oh look at this." He said. He pulled out a section of her large intestine. "You can see the cecum right here." He replaced her intestine and sutured her uterus. He sewed her back up while telling everyone how the NBA exclusively had tall players to discriminate against Jewish people. He laughed and walked out of the room.

I walked out of the hospital digusted by vaginas and babies. Childbirth is only beautiful in concept.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Past the butterfly wall.

Spontaneous pneumothorax is a collection of air or gas in the space between the lungs and the chest that "collapses" the lung and prevents it from inflating completely.  Spontaneous means there is no traumatic injury to the chest or lung.   There are two types of spontaneous pneumothorax: primary and secondary. Primary spontaneous pneumothorax occurs in people without lung disease. It occurs most often in tall, thin, young people. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket but I can't answer it. We are in the middle of rehearsal. It is not an uncommon event. We continue to play. The strap of my saxophone cuts into my neck. The nylon is rough against my skin. I look out of place. Everyone else is dressed casually; shorts, shirts, shoes optional. There I stand, a button down shirt and slacks. I'm entitled to dress up a little. It's my birthday. My phone vibrates again. I always used to roll my eyes whenever I saw those scenes in movies. The phone call. The bad news....
2 comments
Read more

Pseudo-science (like psych).

I consider myself a man of science. I try to approach problems and deal with them logically, using observations previously recorded to handle new problems. So of course my interest was piqued when someone I knew posited that men are needier and more complicated than women. An interesting theory. But to properly examine it, one must understand the concept of sexual selection and its two aspects: male competition and female choice. Which brings us to point one: men are needier [in relationships] than women. This is true. In a natural/primal setting, the males are generally love-'em-leave-'em kinds of guys. Their main objective is to reproduce as much as they can. Humans, in their infinite wisdom, have decreased the emphasis on this to the point where it has become a footnote in male purpose. Civilization dictates that, instead of finding a partner for the sole purpose of reproduction, males find females for life companionship. With the effective removal of their natur...
5 comments
Read more

I wonder, sometimes.

I am standing on the edge of a cliff face. A breeze whips past me as I stare out into the darkness. It's a familiar sight, comforting. The river bends below me. It stretches out, away from me at both ends. The arch of the bridge traverses the river, silhouetted by the house lights and golf course below us. So far away from us. The highway reaches out before us, straight into the hills and disappears on the horizon. It is silent. There are no cars. No planes. No animals. It is just us standing on top of the cliff. As it should be. It's late. A late weeknight. Just a normal Tuesday night to the world. I step away from the edge. In 5 minutes, I will be 22 years old. It's a turning point in my life. A fixed checkpoint. I'm only 21 years old, I'm not an actual adult yet. Maybe legally. But I'm still a child. I'm immature, I laugh at fart jokes. I laugh at everything. Why would I take anything seriously? 21 years old and we still have no responsibilities. We c...
2 comments
Read more