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Originally Posted by nia82  Now we are assigned to a NP and when he tried to take of DS's diaper I said he's intact (confused look here, so I clarified), which means he has a foreskin, do not retract it (he closes the diaper without looking at DS' genitals)... He then is like but you retract it right, cause it has to? To which I answered no, the owner of the foreskin will retract it when the time comes. He looked puzzled and moved on.
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Several years ago I was working a health fair, and a young doctor came over to our booth to talk with us. After a few questions, it was pretty clear that his understanding of intact anatomy and care was off-base. So, I launched into a simple explanation of development (synechia and adhesion), timetable for separation and retraction, and recommendation that the boy be the first to retract, when he's ready.
He blinked a couple of times, then said, "Wow. That is
completely counterintuitive. It's a pocket, so you should clean it." He didn't want to budge from this position, and implied we at our booth were providing dangerous advice.
I explained that it was more a fusion than a pocket or fold, and its purpose was to keep a delicate area clean, not collect unclean matter. And it achieves this function really well. Again, he just blinked a couple of times and said, "Wow, I really need to digest this info. It just flies against everything I ever assumed and everything I've ever been taught." He never really thought about natural adhesions until I asked him why he thought a probe had to be run under the foreskin and around the glans before an infant circ. Then the penny dropped.
I could actually see him processing the information, but I could also see a real internal struggle going on. In just 30 minutes he was unlearning 30 years of assumptions, tuition and intuition.
Finally, I just said, "Doctor, why is this so hard? Nature has figured this out brilliantly.
Work with the body, not against it." And he got it. He was so happy to finally understand, but it was clear that it took a while for the pieces to fit together. Physicians (and, I assume, nurses) are highly intelligent, but trained to think and act in a very disciplined way -- and much of that involves rote memorization and "going by the book". But sometimes, you really don't get it until you're presented with it "outside the box".
For me, it was instructive to watch him go from stubborn to enlightened. The experience definitely helped me frame the discussion thereafter with health professionals. Doctors who espouse misinformation aren't bad people; they are merely holding on to faulty abstracts instead of searching out and embracing real-life experience. And when it comes to intact penises, the tragedy is that US culture -- including the medical profession -- has lost 2 or 3 or 4 generations worth of first-hand experience by automatically altering the male body at birth.
: as a mum in a country where circ is only for religous and medical reasons i can say my 2 intact sons have never had trouble peeing, my ds caden has before now quite happily pulled off his nappy and pee'd on my shoes the little monster lol.
