Friends sons emergancy circ has me wondering what to do?!

[angel04345]

My friend has a son whos a little over a year. The other day his penis was all purple and swollen and it has been decided that he is having a surgery immediatly to circ him. I guess there is nothing she could have done differantly. So this brings up the question about my son! We didn't circ him and I haven't done a thing with him yet! Hes had tubbys and that is as far as it goes! When do I pull back the skin and clean it and doesn't this process hurt? At the docs tomorrow will he know these answers? Or will he jump right in tugging on him! I don't want that unless its something that SHOULD be done! MIL suggested that I start trying to pull the skin back a little each day to stretch it out? I don't know that that really makes any kind of sense! By the next day I don't think the skin will still be stretched out from the day before.....I don't know thought I would ask here and see what other mommas had to say.

[twouglyducks]

My son's are both circ'ed but if this baby were a boy I wouldn't have done it. I did lots of reading. What happened to your friend's ds is very rare. You should never ever pull back the foreskin, and neither should your doctor. I do know that much.

[onlyboys]

You should head over to the Case Against Circ board, they really are simply a truckload of knowledge over there.

Do not retract your son's foreskin. Don't even touch it. The glans is still adhered to the foreskin at this age, and it is not *supposed* to retract. My two intact boys are still not fully retractable at 3.5 years and 22 months. When you go to the ped, DO NOT let him or her touch your son's penis with the intention of retraction.

I have no idea what happened with your friend's son. I can tell you that entire countries of people, though, are intact and have very little need for circ as a fix to penile problems. Don't doubt yourself. You chose right, and there's nothing wrong with your son's penis!

[dynamohumm6]

"emergency circs" are rarely needed. It's like chopping off a little girls labia because she gets repeated yeast infections. It's a load of crap.
You should never ever ever pull back the foreskin. Ever. And before the diaper ever comes off in thet doctors office, you need to make sure they know not to retract him. These are AAP guidelines, but it's amazing how many dr's don't know this.
Retracting a baby's foreskin is exactly what leads to swollen, inflamed, or infected foreskin. The tissue is fused, pulling it back rips it apart and can cause pain & infection. Just leave it alone!

[organicbanana]

:
i was going to reply earlier and let the window just stall... looks like these smart mamas posted just what i was going to.

[Fairy4tmama]

My ds are circ'ed because when I was 18 my 8yr old brother had an emergency circ and I was horrifide for him. If I had it to do over I would not have circed DS#1 and thus DS#2 either. Please don't do it needing an emergency Circ is very rare and there is usualy some midagating(sp?) circumstance, my brother had MD.

[Frankly Speaking]

There is simply no such thing as an emergency circumcision. There are way, way too many other less invasive procedures that can be done first that will resolve any issue. However, many doctors use circumcision as treatment of first choice instead of the treatment of last resort. What other body part would you cut off instead of treating it?

If the circumcision has not been done yet, send her here and we will give her the information that she needs to avoid it and have a happy, healthy and whole son. We have done it many times before and I have no doubt that we will do it many more times. So far, of all of the doctors recommendations for circumcision, (There have been dozens and dozens) there has not been a single circumcision and all of those boys are happy and healthy.

Part of having a healthy penis is doing nothing at all. Do not retract it to clean it. That causes damage and infection instead of good health just as washing out a girl's vagina would cause damage and infections. A boy's foreskin does not need to be "opened up" any more than a girl's vagina needs to be opened up. Read the sticky at the top of "The Case Against Circumcision" titled "Warning for Parents of Intact Sons" for a complete explanation and many mother's experiences.



Frank

[bell bottom blues]

Yes, please send your friend here. I can only guess at what might have happened to her little boy - but none of my guesses would involve a circumcision being needed, because it absolutely isn't needed unless her little one got hit by a car in his penis and it has turned gangrene from the blow. : In which case, thank God he had a foreskin to take the blow for him so that his whole penis isn't being amputated!

Please tell her to come here, and if she's not an online person, please tell her to find a foreskin-friendly doctor before she has this done.

[LuAnn]

"Purple and swollen"? Sounds like it was needlessly retracted, then got stuck behind the glans. I know of a case where when this happened, the parents took the boy to the doc, and he gave antibiotics. That was the treatment. [And, oh yes, a few days later, a "necessary" circumcision.]

The proper treatment, if one foolishly pushes the foreskin back and it gets stuck, can be found somewhere on an anticirc site. It might take 2 people to do this.

[mquester]

This sounds very odd. It would be very rare for your friend's son, at only 1 year old, to have any problem with the foreskin serious enough to be benefitted by circumcision, unless it was a birth defect the doctor missed?
Or if he's been receiving incorrect care.
Has your friend been retracting ds to clean him during diaper changes or baths? This should not be done as it can actually cause severe infections...

Otherwise, she needs to demand that a doctor swab a sample from her son's foreskin and pinpoint the infectionn exactly. Many infections doctors recommend circ for are actually even more common in circumcised boys, meaning circumcision doesn't cure it at all. So the boy still needs further treatment even after the foreskin is removed.

The most commonly diagnosed infection for boys in the preschool age group seems to be this: http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/balanitis/
However it looks as though it is used to cover a broad range of problems doctors often don't bother to test for. Here is a study on the topic as well: http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/balanitis/escala1/

More importantly, if her son actually is the 0.6% of a percentage of males who may benefit from the procedure, that does not mean your son will be.

If your best friend had a mastectomy to remove a cancerous breast, would you do the same thing "just in case it happens to me?" Her son's foreskin doesn't affect your son's at all...

-MQ

[Frankly Speaking]

Originally Posted by mquester

More importantly, if her son actually is the 0.6% of a percentage of males who may benefit from the procedure, that does not mean your son will be.[/U]

-MQ

Actually, that figure should be .006% or 6 out of 100,000 or 1 in 18,000. In other words, exceedingly rare.



Frank

[mquester]

Thanks Frank! I knew there was a 6 in there somewhere, but math is sooo not my forte

Which just goes to prove circumcisions should be a very rare thing indeed, if doctors weren't so quick to cut!

-MQ

[bell bottom blues]

Yeah

[morgainesmama]

When my middle child (boy) was 9 months old he got paraphimosis, which is what most likely happened to your friend's son. He had never, ever been retracted in any manner; he got a bacterial infection probably related to diarrhea; he also got a nasty staph infection on his skin. I was lucky to catch it before the purple state.

I took him to the ER. They iced his glans, which I imagine must have felt terrible, and worked a long time to push it back through the foreskin. Then we applied pressure while the edema went down. It was a horrible ordeal made better by a good doctor, who didn't even jump or comment when my son peed on his face.

Paraphimosis is a very serious condition which, left unnoticed and unchecked, can cause necritis (word choice?) of the glans. It is also a very rare condition. It is most often caused by forceful retraction of the foreskin or catheterization.

If the doctor truly believed that surgery was a necessary route to treatment, a circumcision is not the only choice. There is a far less invasive option called a dorsal slit. It is a small incision in the foreskin that allows it to open, like an episiotomy of the foreskin.

A far less invasive treatment which I have read but not tried because we never had a recurrence of the paraphimosis is to pack the glans in white sugar to reduce edema.

My son was fully retractable after the paraphimosis. It essentially turned his little penis inside out. He is delighted about this fact. He remains fully intact. The urologist did suggest we use hydrocortisone on the glans post-incident to encourage the final separation of the foreskin and also to reduce the possibility of adhesions. I'm not sure how necessary this was but it sounded a lot better than surgery!

An infant's foreskin is PERFECT. It does not need to be cleaned, scrubbed, moved, etc. When a boy becomes retractable, you will know because he will retract. You can then encourage him to gently retract in the tub (like when my son stuffed potting soil into his foreskin, LOL!). Paraphimosis is extremely rare, and can be caused by premature retraction. DO not retract an infant's foreskin and don't let a doctor or anyone else do it either.

Sorry to be lengthy but I hope this has been helpful.

Kristi

[bell bottom blues]

Originally Posted by morgainesmama

(like when my son stuffed potting soil into his foreskin, LOL!)

Kristi

Your son sounds absolutely adorable

[angel04345]

I am glad to have all this info! Seems like all of you know what your talking about. My son was not circed and will not be that was not what my question was it was about how to properly care for him as I do not want something like that to even happen. But I thank all of you for the info we made it through our first well baby with no retraction Doctor even let me know that I didn't have to retract it but he felt it was better to retract a little at a time for hygeine. I have opted to leave it alone it seems painfull to me! Again thanks for the info

[Acksiom]

Originally Posted by angel04345

My friend has a son whos a little over a year. The other day his penis was all purple and swollen and it has been decided that he is having a surgery immediatly to circ him. I guess there is nothing she could have done differantly.

Maybe not, but she may have both grounds and reason for a malpractice suit, and definitely deserves the opportunity to find out for sure.