Saturday, January 19, 2008

Snow and Ink

So I'm driving around doing errands this morning, and I hear this story on the radio. Apparently the chief surgery resident at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale just got fired because he took a picture of a patient's penis with his cellphone during a cholecystectomy and then showed it to his friends. Horrible, right?

I'm having a little bit of trouble feeling sorry for this guy.

Yes, that was really unprofessional behavior. Yes, that was a violation of his trust and the doctor-patient relationship. Yes, the surgeon really should've known better than to create evidence. And it was jocular and silly. But...the guy had "Hot Rod" tattooed on his penis.

Not for nothin', but...hmm. Did you not think that would attract some attention? I mean, I have an unusual tattoo, too (different from a ta-tutu), and I knew when I got it that people would comment. And mine's nothing like that. So, come on, bud. What that resident did was wrong, but, really, the way he's carrying on and being all outraged and horrified is a bit...dude, you let a total stranger with a needle tattoo the words Hot Rod on your penis. Not to mention that now everyone in the literate universe knows about your, um, little secret. I? When that doc had called me, would've been like, fine, sir, whatever, let's just never mention this again.

We're not even going to talk about the number of times I photographed women's genitalia during surgery when I was a GYN resident because they had some clinically interesting or relevant finding. A couple of those pictures even got published, I think, in a journal article, of one woman's vulvar cancer. Not the same thing, I know, but, I'm not sure we told very many of those people we'd taken pictures of their cooch. Our ability to take photographs during surgery is in the standard release form. Now, I concede that the "clinical utility" of these Mayo photographs is questionable, and I was either taking them with the hospital's digital camera or a laparoscope, not a cell phone...but anyway...

In other news, it's snowing in North Carolina.

I think it's sort of funny. In the few hours since I started this post we've actually had some accumulation. We're supposed to get more tomorrow. Maybe it will keep people home and make for an easier call night? A call girl can only hope.

And in still other news, Tiny Tyrant sent me some very cool sock yarn in a yarn swap. Which I promptly tied into a great big knot (with the help of my ball winder) that took me two episodes of Bones to untangle today.

It's very cool. I'll post more about it later now that it's in actual balls and I have a tiny bit of it knit up. Maybe I'll have some time to write tomorrow (keep your fingers crossed for me), but right now, I've got to get to bed....

4 comments:

Valerie said...

Sorry about the yarn mess-up, it is just yarn karma, but the colors are great...on the other, I think the use of the photo was inappropriate, however, my other question is that during a procedure, why was there a cellphone present at all? I would presume that if it were to ring or vibrate that the surprise of that could cause someone to jump and maybe injure the patient.

Barb Matijevich said...

I gotta say, as a non-medical professional (actually, as a non-professional at all) that if you have HOT ROD tattooed on your penis? Maybe you don't really get to be SHY and outraged about it. It would be different if you had "Little Bitty Penis" tattooed on there--then I think the guy should have asked first. But HOT ROD? That's like flying a flag BEGGING for exposure. It's not like the guy bought a second hand penis and it just happened to have that tattoo on there already...

But that's just me. I don't have any tattoos. Or a penis.

Paige said...

It is remarkable how stupid people can be--educated and otherwise.

Now I want to know about your tattoo

Sarah said...

Umm.....ow!
I mean. Ow!
My mom finally found out about my tattoos the other day. She finally saw it peeking out of the top of my jeans. She took it surprisingly well. I don't think anyone is going to photograph it though.

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