A very special thank you goes out to Kat and her hubby Marcelo for being willing to spend a half hour on the phone with me going over why the urologist Gabriel saw is either completely ignorant or just someone who wants to push an unnecessary surgery on a three year old.

I had taken Gabriel in to see the urologist because he has a cyst on his penis. Our pediatrician thought it would be good to have a urologist take a look at it and see if it needed removal. While we were at the urologist, he barely addressed the cyst. He did, however, tell me that Gabriel has phimosis. It's a condition where the foreskin doesn't retract over the head of the penis. I don't know much about the penis or how a toddler's intact penis should look, so when he said that Gabriel needed surgery to circumsize (and take the cyst off), I thought he knew what he was talking about. He didn't.

I spoke with Kat and have spent the past few days doing a lot of research on this subject. Apparently, this is normal for someone of Gabriel's age. The foreskin is supposed to be attached and NOT retract. It protects the penis and down the road, it will be able to retract. Giving Gabriel a surgery to circumcize him (under general anesthesia no less) is not only not necessary, but it also could be harmful to his penis in the long run. This doctor was either completely ignorant of an intact penis or was trying to push an unnecessary surgery on Gabriel just because he's among the people who think the barbaric practice of genital mutilation is a good thing. Either way, I'm fuming over this.

I'm going to be contacting the medical board about this and get a check on this doctor's record. He saw the insurance forms so he knows my husband works for a major department store chain. I was there with Gabriel on a week day, so he probably just thinks I'm a mommy. Well, he might want to learn which parents and patients are attorneys before pulling something like this. I can't even begin to say how upset I am at this. Not only can I contact the medical board about this as Gabriel's mother, but I can also do so since I'm a licensed attorney in this state.

I'll be getting a second opinion before doing this to make sure that there isn't an abnormality with the foreskin, but from all the research I've done, I'm 99% sure it's normal.

So, thank you Kat, without your intervention there's a good chance we'd be going through a law suit for an unnecessary surgery down the road.

Who in their right mind would want to give a 3 year old surgery and put them under general when it's not absolutely needed?

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