Small ones are sweeter!

Yes I'm a slacker. Ever since 4th year started, I've found every excuse in the book to be lazy...and it works! That's why I haven't blogged lately.

I spent part of my summer doing a rural family medicine rotation about 90 minutes from my house. Surprisingly, I found it to be one of the most enjoyable months of medical school. Sometimes the patients reminded me of an "Appalacian ER" skit from Saturday Night Live, but mostly, the people were kind and made me feel welcome.

One day, my attending had scheduled 2 vasectomies. Now first of all, these aren't for the faint at heart. It takes a pretty liberated male to go through with this, let alone, some guy who heard from all his buddies that his voice will squeak for the rest of his life. He either really loves his wife or really does not want anymore kids if he is willing to succumb to the procedure despite all the rumors he heard.

The 2nd guy was much more nervous than the first one, but he saw the 1st guy leave the office intact so that made him feel better. After the doctor prepped him and numbed up his "jewels", he started the procedure. It only takes about 10 minutes and is relatively painless (for me anyways!). Afterwards, the doctor put a couple of tiny little stitches in and then taped them with some tiny little steri-strips, which are like really small pieces of white tape. I didn't know they came in different sizes and had never seen any that small. Well, without thinking first, I blurted out, "I've never seen any that small before!". My statement was followed with a few seconds of uncomfortable silence and all of a sudden the patient says rather indignantly, "Well sorry!". Everybody started laughing. I know my face was about as red as a beet as I explained that I was not talking about the patient. Rather, I was talking about the steri-strips on the patient.

The next day when I came in, the nurse had told the entire staff about the funny thing I said. I caught quite a bit of flack the rest of the week. It's been a few weeks since the incident, but I can hear them now saying, "remember that med student who told the patient that his balls were tiny?......" That's okay. Now I'm a legend.