Fear Fest: Testicular Torsion. The Great Twists Of Doom.

OCTOBER 21st, Testicular Torsion

“I don’t know what I did!! Suddenly it just felt like someone kicked me in the rocks, and- and they never took their foot away!”
-Dean Venture

For the past three weeks we’ve discussed wide spread fears. Today we tackle my greatest fear. Ladies, I’m sorry to say that you won’t identify with this particular fear, but gents, your lives may change forever.
It was October 21st, 2007, 4 years ago to the day. I was getting in the shower with the intention of heading to work. As I was in the shower, I felt a slight twinge in groin region. That sleight pain grew into an explosion of pain. My vision went dark and I doubled over in agony. My brain raced from thought to thought. Time slowed down as I tried to reason out what had just happened to me. Sifting through Simpson quotes, quantum mechanics, advanced algebra, and baseball stats, my brain finally came up with the answer. Testicular torsion.

I’ve read hundreds of books. I’ve spent most of my life in the class room or learning environments, and I’ve watched thousands of hours of documentaries. And where did this nugget of wisdom come from? A cartoon. Specifically The Venture Brothers, episode “Are you there god? It’s me, Dean.” A cartoon saved my life. But let’s slow down, what is testicular torsion? How does one figure out one has it? I’ll let my friends Hank, Dean, Doc and Brock explain.

Specifically, testicular torsion occurs when one or both of the testicles tears free from the scrotal wall and either turns around, or becomes tangled together. I can tell you honestly the pain is something that is imprinted in my mind. In fact, every other pain I’ve experienced since that has somewhat been lessened by the knowledge that greater pain has been survived.

Normally the solution is surgery. I foolishly opted for a more natural solution since I only experienced a partial twist. After I realigned my parts, the pain decreased. I went to work. I spent most of the day sitting, as doing anything caused a pain spike. I went home after my shift and then cried myself to sleep. The next day I had a repeat performance from the other side. I still stayed out of the operation room.

For the next few weeks, every step I took caused me pain. For a few months after that, only every other step caused me pain. For roughly 15 months, I dealt with the occasional stabbing pain in my groin. The pain wasn’t the worst thing, it was the fear of the condition reoccurring. It wasn’t until 20 months later that I could run again pain free. I didn’t miss a day of work and I never took a pain killer more powerful than ibuprofin. I am a fucking idiot.

THE ANSWER: For me, the answer was bed rest and video games. I became an expert on the guitar in rock band. After a month Mass Effect was released, and I was made in the shade. Escaping the pain was easy when I was running around Eden Prime killing husks, or flying around the galaxy hunting Saren and his Geth army. I will be forever grateful to Bioware for the escapism Commander Sheppard provided me. Today however, I live in fear that every wrong step, ever slip, fall, jostle, anything will cause a repeat of the condition. If the unthinkable should happen, I will not be taking the passive approach again. I will ask the doctors to cut open my sack like a thanksgiving roast and fix me up good.