The Brown-Eyed Monster

It was quite an eventful day in the clinic this afternoon. For those of you who don't know, I've have the priveledge to work in our world class Urology department once a week. Thus far its been a great experience. I have been learning a lot and on top of all of that it has me interested in the field as a possible specialty. But I digress. Today we were swamped, up to ears in patients. I was running fifteen minutes late and turns out I beat the Doctor by five minutes. Yet, nothing out of the ordinary as far as the patients we saw.

But for those unfamiliar with what a "urologist" does, let me fill you in. They help people who can't "pee" or have problems with their kidneys or "unmentionables". Its a subspecialty of surgery, which means they are surgeons. They just don't usually operate as often as other surgeons. All an all, an awesome field if you like surgery, not working 110 hours a week, and the smell of urine.

Anywho, we entered the room of a 92 year old patient. He himself happened to a cardiothoracic surgeon way back in the day (Translation: he's smarter than you and I). He was surprisingly alert for someone his age (obviously a doctor). He suffered from an enlarged prostate (Translation: big prostate makes it hard to pee-pee...you've seen the commercials). He had been on a couple of drugs which has shrunk his prostate but it was still larger than most. I've been in the clinic awhile so I knew the drill. When the doctor gloves up, my job is to squirt some KY Jelly on his finger, then observe. But today was different. Something was wrong with the cosmos, an ardvark farted in Wisconsin, A-Rod contemplated taking a pay-cut, something huge caused the Earth to tilt off its axis and made this day different from all the others...

As you may know the only way to get to the prostate is through the "rear-end", hence the necissity for KY Jelly. Apparently you want to feel a "rubbery" organ (hard masses indicate cancer). I've seen these done a bunch of times, well at least enough so I don't even cringe anymore. But like I said, today was different...today I heard the phrase, "Put some gloves on and go ahead and lube yourself up." GULP.

I was frozen for a split second becuase I couldn't believe the words that just came out of the Doctor's mouth. He proceeded to the tell the patient to drop trow and was about to experience two fingers (at different times of course). The patient seemed unphased and was now staring at me with his one good brown eye. The Doc went first and I followed quickly after with the look on my face that said, "I've done this a million times" when in actually I had no idea what I was feeling for. I was asked if I felt the enlarged prostate and I quickly answered "YES!" while I thought to myself, "I guess it could be enlarged if I only knew what a regular prostate felt like". As we exited the room I B-lined for the sink to wash my hands, just in case the glove had been "structurally compromised" during the exam.

All in all it was a fulfilling experience. It made me feel like a real doctor in a way, even though I had no idea what I was doing (I guess thats some peoples view of doctors anyways). But I have to say if any of you are given the the same situation where you are staring face to face with a Brown-Eyed Monster, I would turn and run for the hills for fingers sake.