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

[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.