Baby boy dies after GPs circumcise him

[ailbhe]

Local newspaper article.

When I saw the initial headline, "Baby dies after circumcision," I knew where it had happened and had a horrible feeling I knew the doctor, too.

It's the one who inspired me to change GP surgeries when I was pregnant with Linnea. Same one who said he couldn't sign me off sick with stress when I was in that last job.

Comments

[gloriap.livejournal.com]

What a tragedy. Those poor parents, I can't imagine how hey must feel.

[jentifred.livejournal.com]

I am horrified. OMG.

[mssociallyinept.livejournal.com]

This is tragic. However, bit confused as to why they'd call the emergency number, then give up and leave it to the following morning. :/ If that were my child I'd have been straight on the blower to the hospital!

[batswing.livejournal.com]

It said they were French and didn't say how long they'd been here, so maybe they simply didn't know the hospital, how to get further emergency care. Maybe they thought that was the only emergency number they could use.

[mssociallyinept.livejournal.com]

Maybe, but seems unlikely. I'm sure the French have and therefore know of hospitals, and given they called the "emergency number" they obviously considered it to be an emergency, and I'm sure any parent in this situation, even if they were ill informed about emergency services, would find a way to have their child seen to. I don't know. It just doesn't meet logic, to me.

[ailbhe]

Having met the doctor and dealt with the surgery, for the first few years I lived in Reading, it makes *perfect sense* to me that they would do precisely what they were told and just trust that the doctor had taken everything into account and that this was "normal".

[mssociallyinept.livejournal.com]

Sorry to be a pain in the ass, but out of curiousity, how so?

[ailbhe]

Well, there are a few things, starting with doctor as authority figure, a notion which goes back a long time and holds great sway in many people's lives. Also the sense of entitlement that allows you to decide that you deserve to summon the emergency services for yourself or your family isn't universal (I think I've finally cultivated it though).

And the doctor I know, of the two, was frightening, authoritarian, intimidating, and very very sure of himself. Luckily I had met other UK doctors and knew that changing WAS an option, but if he'd been the first one I met when I came to the country, I might have just stopped going to the doctor. At all. I'd definitely not have taken my kids as often as I actually have done.

[mssociallyinept.livejournal.com]

Ah, makes a little more sense. Though still, I trust my judgement/intuition (as far as my child's concerned anyway) way more than any doctors. So much so, I have demanded second opinions in my surgey many times. Though, I guess, if you were foreign and hadn't been in the country very long, coming across a doctor like this would be rather daunting. Those poor parents.

[ailbhe]

I'm still cultivating that ability to trust myself over the doctors - or rather, to follow through on that trust. When Linnea was 1 weeks old she sotpped breathign in her sleep.

A lot.

The first doctor I saw kindly told me to go away and come back if it was happening in a week. A week later, shaking, pale, ill, and terrified, I came back, saw a new doctor, and Linnea was admitted to hospital for observation. With my second child, I refused to leave until her lung infection was being treated, and in other cases refused to accept medication which I knew to be inappropriate for her.

Not everyone has the balls to do these things. Some of us have to grow them. From the air.

[batswing.livejournal.com]

Oh my God.
Those poor parents.

[webhill.livejournal.com]

!!!
I can't even imagine how that would happen. I wouldn't have imagined you could bleed *that much* into a diaper without at the VERY least discoloring the diaper, having the diaper become unusually swollen, SOMETHING. Not to mention - 4 hours? with a nine-week-old? As if. Wow. Those poor people.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I suspect it depends partially on the type of diaper. A disposable diaper is designed to hold vast amounts of liquid without discoloring, and a baby doesn't have a whole lot of blood in the first place . . . .

[webhill.livejournal.com]

Well.. the estimated blood volume of a newborn is about 85 ml/kg. Assume the kid weighed 4.5 kg that's about 383 ml. No, that's not that much blood. However, it's bright red. If one of my (3) kids urinated more than say 60 mL (which would be double the bladder capacity of a newborn) of normal straw-colored urine into one of their Huggies disposable diapers, the diaper got warm, squishy, and noticably distended. So I'd expect that amount of blood to be REALLY obvious, but obviously I have never seen such a thing happen.

In any case - ugh. I can't understand why anyone would say to leave the diaper on for four hours!! That just seems ridiculous to me.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

This is such a horrible thing to be thinking about . . .

If he only bled out, say, 30 mL, though -- he'd maybe STILL be in serious danger? An adult can handle the loss of 10% of one's blood with no ill effects -- people have 5 liters of blood and they donate a half-liter when they give blood, and that doesn't do any harm -- but an infant? I don't know. I'm no doctor.

Unfortunately, it sounds like the guy who performed the surgery wasn't much more of a doctor than I am.

[webhill.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not a physician, but in the nonhuman mammals I treat the rule of thumb is that up to 15% blood loss doesn't really require more than basic supportive care; 15-30% requires crystalloid support only (so, plain IV saline); >30% is when you need to transfuse. That said, before using that rule of thumb clinically in a neonate of any species I would have to look it up because I don't see a lot of neonates. But now we are getting sooooo far afield. My only point is that wow, I can't imagine a baby could HEMORRHAGE to death without someone noticing something funky about that diaper!

[ailbhe]

The FIRST diaper, four hours after the operation, the parents saw that the baby was bleeding very heavily and tried to get help as instructed by the doctors who had performed the operation. That was in the evening. He was still alive the following morning when he was admitted to hospital because the bleeding still hadn't stopped.

[webhill.livejournal.com]

Ah. So, when they changed that first diaper, the system failed. He should have gone to the ER at that point! Or whatever you guys call it. Casualty? Ambulatory urgent care? Something. Someone needed to treat then. Those poor, poor, poor people :(

[ailbhe]

Yes, they should have had some functional emergency number instead of the GP's own "out of hours" number, which was probably the number they were given which wasn't answered.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's horrifying.

[thereyougothen.livejournal.com]

oh god. this happened in Penticton when we had just moved there 5 years ago. it's just as awful to hear of it again now, it was exactly the same story. parents told not to disturb things. i don't think i would have been able to go 4 hours without looking to see how it was, but if I had been dealing with an authoritarian doctor, who knows?

those poor parents. because you can be sure they are blaming themselves, not the doctors.

[cabbagemedley.livejournal.com]

Fuck.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

A horrible story. I thought so when I saw it in the paper yesterday, and it's no better today.

I'm glad you got away from those doctors, for the sake of all of you.

[cassandre.livejournal.com]

This is dreadful. It makes me feel ill.