Oh Ball(s)
“Man, my nut really hurts.”
That’s how this story starts, some 24 hours ago now.
I climbed out of my car and stood slowly, my 260 pounds of bones, muscle, and pepperoni pizza popping and cracking as I stretched. My car is a 2004 Oldsmobile Alero, approximately six inches off the ground, and getting in and out of it is always a “will-I-blow-the-crotch-out-of-my-pants-this-time?” chore.
I’m happy to report my pants survived the climb back to the surface, but I admit I was a bit befuddled by the sudden throbbing pain in my ‘82 Teste.
Shaking it off, I limped into the hotel to help out on the Blues and Brews Fest my colleague was putting on at the hotel our employer owns. I was even dressed the part of a Blues Brother. But as the night wore on, the pain in my Belushi kept getting worse.
Several times throughout the night I snuck away to the bathroom to inspect the wreckage. I dug and pinched and contorted it in any number of ways that would usually get you kicked out of a public bathroom. Nothing really felt out of the ordinary — NOT THAT I WOULD KNOW — other than the stabbing pain that would shoot through my body every few squeezes.
In many ways, testicles are like the offensive line in football. They have a very important job to do, but to the casual fan if you’re watching a game and you’re noticing them, it probably means something is wrong. My whole life my offensive line has been solid, but last night my right tackle was getting manhandled at the line of scrimmage.
Somehow I managed to work through the night, finally calling it an evening shortly after 8 p.m. The walk back to my Alero lasted approximately 72 days, and lowering myself into the front seat sent a thunderbolt of pain through my entire body.
And so there I was, dressed to the nines holding my crotch crying in the front seat of my shitty car in the parking lot of a hotel/conference center. It was like prom all over again.
Eventually the pain settled on my hour drive home as I unbuckled my pants and let my little guy breathe. I practically rolled out of the car when I got home and immediately swallowed 800mg of ibuprofen and 800ml of Jack. I disrobed, sprawled out on the bed, and then waited to die.
My wife got home shortly after and upon seeing me in such a compromising position probably thought I had something else in mind for the evening’s festivities. Unbeknownst to her, though, had she tried to put her moves on me there was at least a 30 percent chance I was turning her down; I was in that much pain.
We then spent the next couple hours in bed Googling all the diseases I was suffering from, filling our Chrome browser history with an uncomfortable number of dick pics. At one point she offered to inspect it, saying she read she could shine a light on my scrotum to see if there was fluid buildup. And that’s when I knew an emergency room visit was in my future. If I couldn’t tell what was wrong with my scrotum, how would she be able to? Trust me, I visit it way more often these days than she does.
Eventually, though, I just passed out and decided I’d see how I felt in the morning.
Spoiler alert: Not any better.
Begrudgingly nothing much had changed in the morning, so I took a shower and headed for the hospital. Like the amazing wife she is, Amanda offered to call in to work and come to the hospital with me, but I felt like this was the kind of thing a man has to face alone.
Well, alone along with like eight or nine strangers at the hospital.
I’ve never gone to the E.R. before so the whole thing felt foreign to me. They took me back to the room where an attractive looking nurse (of course) told me to take off all my clothes, pee in a cup, and then put on the gown. And don’t get me started on these gowns — I spun around in circles trying to figure out how to tie it while my pasty white ass flashed every few seconds like the $1 spot on the Price is Right wheel.
A few minutes later another attractive nurse and an attractive doctor (what the hell is this, Grey’s Anatomy?) walked in and we started having a robust conversation about my testicles. I explained my symptoms and she hypothesized — as I had — that I may be suffering from an inguinal hernia. But after several rounds of pushing, poking, prodding and — coughing — she couldn’t find anything.
I mean she couldn’t find anything wrong, smart ass.
She declared they were going to send me for an ultrasound and made way for a fourth attractive hospital employee to come in and wheel me down. I don’t know about you, but I prefer my health care professionals to look like Wilfred Brimley in matters of the scrotal region. But here they kept trotting out models like I was on an episode of Punk’d.
The nice ultrasound tech asked me a few questions and got to work. I couldn’t help but think of all the times she’s probably done this on the belly of a beautiful pregnant woman, mom and dad smiling as they find out the sex of the baby. And now she’s in a dark room with a fat ginger taking 300 photos of his Twinkie, Ding Dongs, and Ho Hos with a device so cold when she was done I doubt she could even tell if I was a boy.
When it was finally over, they wheeled me back to my room. Only this time when she left, the door was cracked ever-so-slightly. I took a picture to show you the hilarious angle in which they left me. All I can tell you is that if someone happened to walk by and peak in that crack, they wouldn’t have enjoyed what was staring back at them.
Then the waiting began. A lot goes through a man’s mind while he’s laying naked on a bed covered in an old table cloth with only his iPhone and a throbbing gonad to keep him company. Why is this happening to me? Is this serious? Where’s that draft coming from? All racing through my mind.
It took roughly 90 minutes for them to come back and explain what was going on. The doctor even drew a little picture — sorry, not including THAT pic — to explain they were treating me for something called Epididymitis. Don’t Google it if you’re at work. Basically it’s inflammation in one of the tubes down there and it’s something I had seen in my Google self-diagnosing.
She said they were sending me home with some antibiotics, but that everything else looked great. She even said that my testicles were the right size and shape. Thanks, Doc. I’ve really been hitting them hard at the gym.
There was one interesting catch, though. While this particular ailment can stem from a number of things, it can also be caused by the bacteria that cause Gonorrhea or Chlamydia. And so she asks me:
“Are you sexually active?”
“Not at the moment, no.”
“No, I mean are you promiscuous?”
To which I could only think, “Doc, more people have touched my junk in the last two hours than have in the last 36 years. I think we can rule out STDs.”
