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

Popular posts from this blog

I'm a geologist, not an alcoholic.

I thought I had seen people drink before. Hell, I thought that I had drank before. But, clearly, I thought wrong on both of those counts. I cannot, for the life of me, think of a reason to justify all of the drinking that transpired down there last week. There was no rhyme or reason to it, it just was. Field work just makes a man thirsty. Taking this class was easily one of the best things I've ever done. We worked hard every day out in the field. Wake up at 7, leave the beach house by 8, hit the water by 9. My first three field days were in service on the R/V Acadiana , a 58 foot vessel that towed the CHIRP fish , the air gun, and the streamer to measure all the seismic data--looking at the subsurface of the seafloor we drove over. My second ship was the R/V Itasca using the multibeam , sidescan , and grab sampler --getting seafloor surface bathymetry. They were long, exhausting days and we returned to the docks around 6 or 7 every evening. And then, drinking. So much ...

Finger pointing good.

When I was on the boat doing science at Galveston, I saw a lot of dolphins. It was a significant experience for me because I have never actually seen a wild dolphin in real life before. It was sort of a dream come true. And in the middle of the shipping channel, no less. They really are amazing animals. It really kills me to realize I'll probably never see dolphins in Galveston again because of what happened to the Gulf. What is happening to the Gulf. It really is a tragedy. On a much lighter note, I started this Insanity workout program and it was so intense that I threw up before I finished the first workout. That is a good sign, I think. It is certainly an incentive to complete the entire thing. Anything that makes you feel that bad so quickly must be good for you.

The goodest, even.

A couple of days ago, as I was leaving the research campus with my friend to go home, a woman approached me with her bike. "Excuse me," she said. "By any chance, are you headed that way?" She pointed off in the general direction that was the only way to leave campus. "Why yes." I said. "If it's not too much to ask," she started. "Because my bicycle has a flat tire--" "Sure." I said. "We can fit your bike in here, too." And with that, we drove a Belgian woman home. She told us about her family back in Belgium and how we have a better education system here and we're more bike friendly than Europe and how she misses her family and Skypes with them in the evenings. We dropped her off and continued on our original route. Later, as I entered the final stretch of my homeward journey, I saw a large something in the road. As I got closer, I realized it was a large turtle. I quickly pulled off into the should...