Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Circumcision gone bad

Don't be fooled by the title of this blog. I didn't cut off a little boy's penis. He is still a boy, thank goodness. I'm on my nursery month right now so I've been doing lots of circumcisions. And if I say so myself, I've gotten pretty good at them. I think I'm down to about 10-15 minutes per circ, and I have had very good results. HOWEVER, yesterday I had a small complication. Not for the baby, but for ME. I was injecting lidocaine to numb up the baby's penis - something I've done many many times before. I was feeling confident, chatting with my resident and working quickly. I withdrew the needle in order to inject more lidocaine on the other side... and whaddya know, I stuck myself. A small poke in my finger, but I saw a little drop of blood. Nobody saw it happen, and for a millisecond I thought about not saying anything. But I knew I had to. So I told my resident, and I had to stop the procedure and go through the whole needlestick protocol. It can be quite painful. They took 5 tubes of blood from me (it was a lab tech who I was rude to once, so I think maybe he took more blood than he needed as revenge). They checked the baby's mom for diseases. Everything is negative so far. But I felt like such an idiot. I guess that's what I get for being too confident, and being careless with my needle. Lesson learned. And intern year continues...

1 comment:

Chris Giovagnoni said...

I'm glad you poked your finger and didn't prick it