Friday, January 27, 2006

 

The scrotum is such an interesting flap of skin

Setriously, guys, I don't know how you can walk around with a set of major endocrine organs and essentially the hub of your manhood hanging outside your body, unprotected, vulnerable and cold.

I assisted in removing the testis from a cute Border Collie mix on Tuesday leaving him with an empty, sad sack, blowing in the wind.

The surgery went well, and we had one bleeding vessel that we ligated by tying some catgut (acutally made from cow intestine?) suture, and the closure went well. We checked on him later Tuesday, and he wasn't licking at his incision site and he didn't seem ouchy, probably due to the anti-inflammatory drgs we administered.

Wednesday morning he looked fine, but Wednesday evening he had a big fat seroma in his scrotum. The poor kid's scrotum was filling with blood like a baloon, and some of that blood was clotting.

I'll spare you the image, but imagine a very distended, purple scrotum. (actually, I googled for images of scrotal seromas and scrotal ablations, but I should have known better. . .)

The surgeon was very careful and as gentle as could be on the tissues, and the closure had no complications. We didn't understand why this seroma waited over 24 hours to appear, but some of the residents said that sometimes things like this just happen.

Oh, and I forgot to mention--I got to perform my first dog castration last week. I've done cat castrations before, but since the shelters sent so many extra females last semester, I never got around to a castration.

Popping cat testicles out of the scrotum is much like shelling peanuts, but that dog last week was well-endowed, so his were more like plums (purple, even!). And yes, Susan was right. . .popping them out feels quite satisfying. I guess I would compare the experience to that of slipping tender, steamed edamame beans out of their tender, fuzzy pods. But on a larger scale.

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