Med Students Confuse Baby’s Vital Organ With Umbilical Cord: It’s As Horrible As You’re Thinking

Med students in Mexico reportedly botched a basic procedure that queasy fathers all over the world have been getting right for decades.

What is especially horrible about this story is that they didn’t just confuse the umbilical cord with something else. They confused it with that something else.

Zulem Contreras, the child’s mother, and Diego Rangel Izaguirre, the child’s father, were understandably upset when they discovered what the med students had done to their little boy.

Doctors told Contreras shortly after she gave birth to their son that there had been a “minor accident.” Tell that to the baby, pictured above (presumably still irate from just how “minor” it was.)

Turns out, the med students “reportedly tried to cut the baby’s umbilical cord, but they accidentally cut off part of his penis,” Dominic Kelly of Opposing Views reports.

“When my child was born and they cut his umbilical cord, they injured his penis,” Izaguirre said in comments reported by the Daily Mail. “And unfortunately, when the surgeon started sewing it, he made two other new injuries, almost two centimeters deep.”

The hospital spokesman, however, pointed out that many of the media reports are false concerning the severity of the injury, though, it’s noted, an “investigation is ongoing.”

Here’s what the spokesman did admit to.

“The Regional Delegation rejects the versions spread by media according to which the genitals of a newborn ‘were cut’ in the General Hospital no. 1. During the cut of the umbilical cord, the skin of the prepuce [foreskin] was accidentally injured and repaired through the usual circumcision process that was consented by the parents.”

Still sounds like the little guy had a bad day.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the only time med students have made national news for all the wrong reasons. This Inquisitr story reports a similar case involving nursing students at a Kansas community college.

These students were removed from the nursing program after posting gross but relatively benign photographs of themselves to Facebook, each posing with a human placenta.

(Yep, totally not as bad.)

In the case of the Mexico story, here’s hoping the hospital spokesman’s version of events is closer in line to the mental image of what the story conjures up. But that isn’t something that will be known for sure until details of the investigation are made public.

In the meantime, let’s hope the little guy has a speedy recovery, and that these med students learned something.

[Image of Contreras and baby via Daily Mail/CEN, linked above]