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Re: Question for Robin about my 11 month old son....

Written by RJK at 23 Mar 2000 19:01:06:

As an answer to: Re: Question for Robin about my 11 month old son.... written by Marnie at 23 Mar 2000 17:24:30:

Marnie, the last thing in the world I want to do is abuse you; you've been thru enough pain & mental anguish without having more piled on, & I think you understand I have your best interests (& those of your son) foremost in mind (how much mental abuse has been justified with such words?) Having said that, I do think, as you've interpreted it, that the time is at hand for action, instead of yet more words. Another point: when you look for advice, you need competent advisors who know what they're talking about & not emotionally in one camp or another--that is why I've repeatedly urged you to find a competent urologist or paediatrician you trust (this of course lets out your doctor who said, "they'll go away" and the other guy who said "rip 'em loose!". I'm not prepared to argue whether circumcision is, or is not, abuse: the fact remains your boy is already circumcised (no point in mourning or rejoicing over this fact) & he now has a condition that needs to be relieved before he can go on with living a normal life. Another point: this may sound weird, but if you could manage to take a close-up picture of the penis with its skin bridges and send the picture to Robin & the forum on the 'Net, it could be shown to experienced urologists who could thus give more informed advice than can be given when based only upon verbal descriptions of the condition. I can see where repeated, unsuccessful efforts to break the bridges loose manually could be painful and traumatic, much more so than a single separation with a scalpel which should heal quickly with minimal scarring. (Surely he already has some scarring from the circumcision itself?) If the bridges are broken loose carefully, the healed points of separation are likely to be pretty inconspicuous when the penis is viewed as a whole. Certainly the older the child is at the time of bridge repair, the greater scarring that is likely to result. And once the bridges are gone & the site healed, any adhesions are highly unlikely to recur if you fully expose the area when you wash it, and teach him to do the same when he gets old enough to bathe himself. This is really no different from normal bathing procedure, with a circumcised or an uncircumcised penis. My sister's doctor instructed her to separate the foreskin remnant from the points where the bridges had been attached every time she bathed her son, & the adhesions never recurred. It concerns me to see you in such distress over something that I believe (perhaps wrongly) could be corrected quickly, once and for all. Best wishes, RJK.

>Robert,
>I appreciate your candor, and you are absolutely right -- I need to do something about this problem and stop whining. It's the "do something" issue I am stuck on. For the past few weeks I have been researching this issue and I have been told many different things by many different self-proclaimed experts. I have learned that pulling skin bridges apart can cause scarring and can result in re-adhesions that may prove to be more serious than the original problem. As a matter of fact, some people who strongly advised against manual separation went so far as to imply that doing so would be akin to abuse -- although many of these same people believe that circs are abusive, too.
>Anyway, it was those conversations that led me to this steriod cream path. And I thought this forum may be a good place to research it.
>In my defense, I believe that I, as a mom, owe it to my son to research all of my options prior to taking action. But you are correct in implying that I do need to leave my emotional state out of it when asking for advice.
>Thank you for your response.
>--Marnie
>>Marnie, I realize you sent this question to Robin, not me, but inasmuch as it's on the open forum I'm going to take the opportunity to say a couple of things, like them or not. To begin with, it's long past the time for feeling awful about what you did to your baby, if there ever was such a time. You did what you did because at the time you must have felt it was in his best interests (or maybe in accordance with his father's wishes, which his father felt were in his best interests), and if the damned skin bridges hadn't developed the whole episode would be forgotten by now. At this point, instead of feeling awful, it is up to you to decide where to go with the problem from here, to end it. What is needed, looking at things from my corner (and, hopefully, from the child's point of view), is to get rid of the skin bridges (not hope they'll go away or hope you can get rid of them with an ointment), let the kid heal up, (which will take an amazingly short time) and FORGET THE WHOLE THING! I mean, FORGET IT! (Not continue to discuss it and mourn over it for the rest of time. Some of us [90 million Ameericans] are circumcised and some are not, but very few of us make a lifelong hobby of obsessing over it.) This (getting rid of the bridges quickly)is in your baby's interests and in yours in the short and long run. You could continue to wring your hands, cry and moan, and do nothing until he's 20 years old. This would be a cruelly stupid way to go. It would not make him (or you!) a happier or healthier person. What you can do now (dare I say must do now?), and should if your interest is truly in helping the boy and not in moping about in the slough of despond, is to go to a physician you can trust, and GET THE PROBLEM TAKEN CARE OF, FINISHED. DO IT!!!
>>Best wishes, sincerely, Robert Knight.
>>
>> question in the other forum and was helped tremendously by other posters, but I have a question that I thought you could answer since you seem so very knowledgable on the subject. My son was circ'd and now has adhesions (skin bridges?)-- one or the other. Anyway, someone on another site recommended a steroid cream to break the adhesions, while another person on the same site argued that the steroid cream would not work since my son has "circumcised" adhesions, versus "natural" ones. Do you know what the difference is? Is it true that his "circumcised" adhesions will not break on their own the way "natural" adhesions do?
>>>Any information you may have on this would be greatly appreciated. I'm so very worried about my son and feel absolutely awful that I've inflicted this condition on him.
>>>Thank you in advance for you help.
>>>--Marnie


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