A Tale of Two Testes
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It’s almost the end of November; the month where men live out their moustacioed fantasies and raise money and awareness for men’s health.
I have a beard that I have not shaved off and will not be growing back upper lip first – I’m just not ready for that right now (men’s health!).
However, in aid of awareness, I will replace an embarrassing mo’ with an embarrassing story about my tackle. And, just as the moustaches of November are generally a little unsettling, so will this story be.
Picture the scene: I’m 17, not long through puberty (late bloomer…possibly still blooming at 26), a thoroughly unengaged year 12 student, content with playing guitar all day and generally doing a bang-up impression of a wallflower.
I wake up one morning with a fairly aggressive and persistent pain in my left testicle. The type of pain that feels like it’s going to be something serious and probably a bit of hassle to sort out.
Now, I have never had the type of relationship with my family where I would go to them for advice about such a thing (still don’t), so I decided that an in-shower self-diagnosis was going to do the trick. Bear in mind, I hadn’t gotten my head around Google at this point, so there was exactly none of that.
A gentle and tentative touch-up revealed what I assumed to be a foreign lump.
Conclusions were jumped to, and of course, a quiet, cancer-based panic set in. Now I, to this day, have a bit of an ‘it’s probably fine, just leave it and see what happens‘ attitude, and this instance was no different. I mean, never mind that it hurt to sit down, stand up, walk, sneeze. It’ll probably go away…right?
So off I go to school (a car day, not a bike day thank God), wincing with every depression of the clutch and barely hearing anything that’s said through my first two classes.
By late morning, it hasn’t improved. If anything, it was worse. I’d still rather die of undiagnosed testicular cancer at this point than ask my folks for advice, so I decide to turn to my old high school PE teacher. We had developed a bit of rapport, and I felt comfortable enough to ask her for advice. I texted her, and she immediately wrote back telling me ‘go to a doctor immediately, idiot’.
Now, if family doctors aren’t for avoiding in times of crisis, I don’t know what they’re for, so I decided to go to a bulk-billed clinic. After an awkward discussion with both my parents where I cited severe stomach pain as my cause, they handed over the Medicare card and I took myself off to a centre. I was greeted by a room full of tired parents and screaming children, which dialled my upset level to six. There was also a young man in charge of handing out forms who was devastatingly chipper, which was absolutely infuriating.
It was at this moment that I realised I was going to have to vocalise my problem to a person out loud and face to face for the first time.
Upset level turned to seven.
After about 20 minutes of wincing and becoming more and more agitated, a middle-aged female doctor emerged and called my name. Heart pounding with nerves (maybe I should just leave and die quietly?), I followed her to the examination room, and sat as she asked me what had brought me here this sunny day. Moment of truth. “I’ve got pain in my left nut.”
That’s what I went with. “Nut.” To a doctor. A lady doctor.
To her credit, she didn’t laugh at me. She did, however, ask me to drop-trou so she could have a butcher’s. Now at this point in my life, I could count on one hand the number of people who had seen my boys since puberty, and none of those had been at lunchtime on a Wednesday under fluorescent lights. Upset level turned to eight. But I bit the bullet and did it. First, she examined me lying on a table (requesting I hold my worried penis out of the way, for access), then again standing up.
Then there was inner-thigh stroking (checking for reflex?), the old “cup the balls and cough” trick, and then, as I was reaching what I thought was the pinnacle of discomfort, she decided to bring one of her doctor mates in for a second opinion. Perfect. So we went through the whole rigmarole again, now with TWO lady doctors kneeling in front of me stroking, cupping, and requesting coughs. Admittedly, I was starting to see the humour in the situation.
Cue reality check.
The lady doctors had decided I might have something called a “torsioned testicle”, (yay, not cancer!), which, if left untreated, could lead to loss of the testicle, or in extreme cases, death (is cancer still an option?). A torsioned testicle is where one of your ball-cords twists/knots and cuts off circulation. They called the hospital to tell them I was on my way, and off I went, my upset level now at a firm nine.
Now in emergency rooms, there’s a thing called Triage, which is where they decide who gets treated first. Things like heart attacks are at the top, and non-life-threatening things like broken fingers are near the bottom. My testicle ranked just under heart attacks, so within minutes I was in a gown, on a bed, waiting for a doctor and explaining to my nurse that I had a problem with my left nut.
But of course (because I’m lucky) I got two doctors, of the tall, well-built male variety this time. If two lady doctors examining my chaps provided one level of unease, two men who, proportionally speaking, would have been packing HEAT, raised that level substantially. Upset level turned to 10.
These gentlemen were very nice, but left me only to return minutes later with a troupe of student doctors. So now there are about eight people crowded around the bed, examining my veg while one of them is tasked with keeping my meat out of the way.
So surely we’re done by now?
I’ve at least tripled the contact my junk has had with the outside world – surely that’s it? Nope. One more. I have to get an ultrasound.
So off I waddle to a dimly-lit room, population one female, who props my balls up on a rolled up towel and rubs gel on them with something that looks remarkably like a Taser while I hold old mate out of the way.
Now, the good news was that it was deemed not to be a torsion or cancer, but only an inflammation of some kind. No explanation from them or me how it happened (by this point, you know I’d tell you if I knew), so they dosed me up on antibiotics and sent me on my way. It was 8.30pm. I’d been at the hospital for around eight hours and eaten nothing since 11am (you know, in case of surgery…) so I went home, mumbled some sort of half-truth explanation about where I’d been to my family, ate some toast, and went to bed.
I haven’t had issues with my chaps since (not medical at least…we’ve certainly had our disagreements), but this wouldn’t be a cautionary tale without a point, so here it is: if you’ve got pain, a lump, abnormality, or if you’re just a bit of a hypochondriac, go get checked. It could be an easy fix, as it was for me, but it also could be much worse. I could be “Ol’ Cali One Nut” now, or even “Ol’ Cali Dead Nuts” or something.
Absolute worst case, you get a vaguely funny story out of the experience. But also, you might be saving yourself from dying a death, and nobody wants to get got by their own balls.
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