I had no idea that I, a small-town, naive, aah-shucks kid, would become a thong expert. For better or worse, though, thanks to my job as an ER physician, that's exactly what I've become. Just don't look for that entry on my resume!
I was attending medical school, in Philadelphia, the first time I walked into a Victoria's Secret. I was with two of my buddies and we were on the hunt for something sexy, something hot, something that would tell our girlfriends that yeah, we might be medical students, but we were hip medical students. Good luck trying to find the nerd in us that Valentine's Day!
I had never been in a Victoria's Secret before but, because my buddies seemed real comfortable about the whole thing, I tailed them through the front door. "The secret," they confided, "is not to touch anything."
I lasted less than five minutes. Okay, I'm lying. It was more like five seconds.
I felt like I should have paid a cover charge, my bobble-head taking in all the life-like mannequins modeling the newest underwear trends. I could have sworn one of them winked at me as I was checking out the intricacies of her lace borders. Easily my lowest point ever on the wishful thinking scale.
Not paying attention to where I was walking, I knocked into a table loaded with skimpy undergarments. Luckily, though, I was able to catch myself and right the table before we both hit the ground. Like a klutz, I tried to straighten a few piles of panties before giving up, realizing that never again would I hold ten thongs in my hands at one time.
My face felt flush. Ebbs of desperate sweat trickled down my back. I took a deep breath and recovered slightly. Keeping it cool, I continued walking down the aisle, pausing here and glancing there, sure that I was looking more and more at home.
My confidence, however, was short-lived. Directly in front of me, approaching, was a pretty girl with a Victoria's Secret pin on her lapel. Brandy, it said. I turned and looked behind me, hoping I wasn't the one in Brandy's line of fire. No such luck.
"Hello, sir, what can I help you with today?"
"Um, well, I um, well--I'm looking for a Valentine's Day gift for my girlfriend," I stammered.
"That's easy enough," Brandy said enthusiastically. "What size is she?"
What size is she? What size is she? WHAT SIZE IS SHE? Shit, I had no idea.
"Um, I think, well, um...I'm not sure," I said, now definitely feeling a little woozy.
Sliding her hands down her hips, Brandy asked innocently, "Is she my size?"
What??? Was this an open invitation to check her out? Did I need a coupon for this?
I passed on Brandy's invitation. "Yeah, well, I think she is," I said, eyes downward, feet pacing side-to-side. "I'm not feeling all that great, though," I mumbled, trying to escape, "so I'm going to go out in the hallway and sit down for a minute. I'll be right back." Yeah, right. Liar.
Thus, my history with Victoria's Secret. Needless to say, Karen (my eventual wife) did not get a VS outfit. I'm good for chocolate and jewelry and wine, but if she wanted a guy to buy her those skimpy outfits, she married the wrong one.
How does this relate to my life in the ER? Well, with as many thongs as I have seen in the ER, sometimes I wish I had been born in a Victoria's Secret. Then I wouldn't be so caught off guard, so queasy, each time I saw one.
Especially on a guy!
Recently, after hearing a trauma alert called for Room 29, I ran into the room to find a very belligerent middle-aged male, quite intoxicated, with multiple contusions and abrasions to his face. A victim of a barroom assault, per the paramedics. He was being both verbally and physically abusive to our staff, aggressively swinging his fists and kicking his legs at several of us. Another drunk tough guy talking big and hitting low.
We were unable to calm him down, despite our best efforts. Not knowing if he had any life-threatening injuries, we chemically sedated and paralyzed him before emergently intubating him, hooking him up to a ventilator. This ensured our safety from his flagrant behavior while we got a more thorough physical exam and ran the appropriate tests, all in a calmer manner.
After stabilizing this gentleman, one of our newly-hired aides began removing this patient's clothes so we could do a fully-exposed physical exam.
Now, picture it. Balding, middle-aged man. Scruffy, ruddy face. Gold-plated incisor. Carhartt jacket. Flannel shirt. Wrangler jeans. Steel-toe boots. All coming off.
The aide cleared his throat. I looked up to find him blushing. "Does this come off, too?"
Everybody stopped what they were doing and our eyes followed his. Oh no! This patient had on one of the skimpiest candy-apple red thongs that any of us had ever seen, frilly-lace included. And although I didn't know what size this patient wore, I would bet the thong was too small, evident by both of his testicles hanging out on either side of its sparse fabric.
I know, fricking gross. That's what I thought, too. I imagined connecting a cable between them so they could catch up with one another. Can you imagine that conversation?
"Hey, Leftie," his right testicle would say, "can you believe this asshole? Packing and suffocating us in this thin, red snatch of flimsy fabric! I'm pissed!"
"Hell, yeah. This better be the last time or I'm outta here. It's nice to breathe again. That damn thing was pressing me right low to the brown hole."
Needless to say, after the appropriate gawking was done, we cut the dainty, delicate undergarment off this patient and placed it in its own clear plastic garment bag to give to his family. The nurse placed it smack on top of his pile of possessions, no less. Accidentally, I'll assume. (Side note here--always be kind to your nurse and never, ever spit at them!)
Based on his wife's expression when the nurse handed over his clothes, this patient had some serious explaining to do. I could only imagine his testicles' flagrant screaming for mercy when she got done with them. At least, to this guy's credit, he didn't have a matching "tramp stamp" tattoo in the small of his back.
Soon after that day, I was at our local mall and passed by Victoria's Secret. Sadly, despite all the skimpily clad mannequins, all I could picture was a near-naked guy in a red thong sitting on a rickety bar stool guzzling Budweisers and slamming back shots of Jim Beam.
And they wonder how we in the medical field get jaded!
As for my wife, well, she'll just keep getting chocolate. And jewelry. And wine. And a pair of Hanes granny panties. Again.
As always, thanks for reading. Next post will be Wednesday, February 24. See you then. Big thanks for all your support and votes in the recent Medgadget Medical Blog Awards!
Showing posts with label testicle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label testicle. Show all posts
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
The Amazing Race
To understand this next patient, you need to do me a favor. Ball your hand into a fist. Now, rotate your fist either way as far as you can. When you can't rotate any farther and your forearm muscles feel tense and strained, imagine that you are Stretch Armstrong and continue rotating your fist for a full rotation. Pretty amazing, yes? Now, do the impossible and imagine another full rotation. And then another.
This is exactly what happened to Javier's testicle. Javier, a handsome but frantic eight year-old, had presented to our ER around 10 a.m. just a few weeks back. He had been born with an undescended testicle and had been closely followed by our pediatric urologist, who most recently had seen him just a month prior. Because his testicle had finally decided to spontaneously show up for this life, Javier's doctor was debating whether to surgically anchor his testicle down to keep it in place. Yep, a suture from his testicle to his scrotum.
Unfortunately, on the morning Javier had presented to our ER, he had awoken at 2 a.m. with sudden and severe left-sided groin pain. He was comfortable lying perfectly still, but the minute he moved or someone approached him to palpate his groin area, he was beside himself. You couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor kid who, despite his pain, was trying his best to be courageous.
After some morphine and a brief exam, in which he wouldn't even let me get close enough to thoroughly examine his genitalia, we proceeded with a very quick workup to figure out where his pain originated from. His urinalysis came back clean, just as I expected. Good blood work. The test that I most needed was an ultrasound of his affected testicle. To complete this test, because he was in such intense pain, we needed to give Javier an additional generous dose of morphine. The ultrasound tech was then able to manipulate Javier's scrotum to view his left testicle.
Sure enough, the ultrasound revealed that he has no blood flow to his testicle--a diagnosis of "torsion" of the testicle. So, from above, your fist = Javier's testicle. All the vessels that lead to and from his testicle had been twisted and rotated to the point that they closed off and were no longer delivering significant blood to the testicle.
Javier was in danger of losing his boyhood. Cringe-worthy stuff, I must say. I'd cry, too. I could only hope someone would be kind enough to load me up on morphine. And lots of it.
Javier, by this time, had been in pain for approximately nine hours. Time was "of-the-essence," so to speak, to save his testicle (after 6-8 hours, we begin to seriously worry). There are several manipulations one can sometimes attempt in the ER to save the testicle but, again, I couldn't get near Javier's testicle to really palpate it, let alone manipulate it. I was very close to giving Javier some anesthesia in our ER in an attempt to urgently "unrotate" his testicle. Thankfully, though, his pediatric urologist was close-by (from our earlier alert to her) and arrived in just minutes to take Javier to the OR. The race was on to save his testicle.
After establishing the diagnosis, I had a chance to go spend some time with Javier and his family. Javier and his uncle were well-versed in English, but his father wasn't. Fortunately, his uncle did a fantastic job of translating and by the end of our conversation, Javier's father had given permission to surgically repair Javier's testicle.
Poor Javier, though, was crying inconsolably now, probably as much from the fear of the unknown as from the pain of his testicle. More morphine, please.
I should have saved my drawings explaining the testicular torsion from that day. If I may say so, they were beautiful. Stunning, actually...NOT. They were a complete mess, like most of my attempts at drawing are. I should probably spend more time at home practicing how to draw a realistic testicle, so I'll be ready the next time. I would just need to be very careful about where I leave these practice drawings lying around. And who knows, maybe with a little practice I'll become the male version of Georgia O'Keefe!
What explanation Javier and his family understood best, though, was my fist and my attempt to rotate it. They understood that this "was not good" for the testicle. Bad, actually. To reinforce the seriousness of the situation, I brought a medical book into the room and was able to show them a legitimate picture of the testicle and how it had rotated on itself.
I have great news to share with you, though. Javier still has two functioning testicles! Oh, he sure does! Yes, yes--of course I'll wait for the cheers to die down. After the pediatric urologist made her scrotal incision, she was able to unrotate Javier's testicle and it immediately "pinked-up," meaning blood-flow had been reestablished. She later shared that his testicle probably survived this long because of two reasons; 1) his testicle rotated only a couple times, and loosely at that, and 2) the rotations probably didn't completely cut off his blood supply and a trickle flow of blood may have sustained the testicle. Lucky ball! She tacked it down so that this would hopefully not happen again to brave Javier. Yep, a suture from his testicle to his scrotum (did I mention this already?).
Regardless, I'm just happy that Javier can still face his world with two functioning balls. Let's face it--there is a reason we call them "jewels," and, as any guy will testify, it's better to face the world with two of them instead of one.
If things hadn't worked out for Javier, though, he would still have had one functioning testicle and worse things than that exist. I'm just glad that, in a few years, he won't have to go pick out a life-like prosthesis. Hmmm--decisions, decisions. A steel ball? Wooden? Saline-filled? I personally would go for the steel ball, after living through residency. Come to think of it, though, imagine what a chick-magnet a ten-pound prosthetic testicle could have been for Javier, regardless of what it was made of!
Initially, I thought we had helped Javier win The Amazing Race, saving his testicle and all. But after thinking the prosthesis thing through, maybe not.
Sorry, buddy.
Hats off to Javier for being a brave little boy. As always, thanks for reading. The last round of comments were very cool. Next post will be Wednesday, January 20.
This is exactly what happened to Javier's testicle. Javier, a handsome but frantic eight year-old, had presented to our ER around 10 a.m. just a few weeks back. He had been born with an undescended testicle and had been closely followed by our pediatric urologist, who most recently had seen him just a month prior. Because his testicle had finally decided to spontaneously show up for this life, Javier's doctor was debating whether to surgically anchor his testicle down to keep it in place. Yep, a suture from his testicle to his scrotum.
Unfortunately, on the morning Javier had presented to our ER, he had awoken at 2 a.m. with sudden and severe left-sided groin pain. He was comfortable lying perfectly still, but the minute he moved or someone approached him to palpate his groin area, he was beside himself. You couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor kid who, despite his pain, was trying his best to be courageous.
After some morphine and a brief exam, in which he wouldn't even let me get close enough to thoroughly examine his genitalia, we proceeded with a very quick workup to figure out where his pain originated from. His urinalysis came back clean, just as I expected. Good blood work. The test that I most needed was an ultrasound of his affected testicle. To complete this test, because he was in such intense pain, we needed to give Javier an additional generous dose of morphine. The ultrasound tech was then able to manipulate Javier's scrotum to view his left testicle.
Sure enough, the ultrasound revealed that he has no blood flow to his testicle--a diagnosis of "torsion" of the testicle. So, from above, your fist = Javier's testicle. All the vessels that lead to and from his testicle had been twisted and rotated to the point that they closed off and were no longer delivering significant blood to the testicle.
Javier was in danger of losing his boyhood. Cringe-worthy stuff, I must say. I'd cry, too. I could only hope someone would be kind enough to load me up on morphine. And lots of it.
Javier, by this time, had been in pain for approximately nine hours. Time was "of-the-essence," so to speak, to save his testicle (after 6-8 hours, we begin to seriously worry). There are several manipulations one can sometimes attempt in the ER to save the testicle but, again, I couldn't get near Javier's testicle to really palpate it, let alone manipulate it. I was very close to giving Javier some anesthesia in our ER in an attempt to urgently "unrotate" his testicle. Thankfully, though, his pediatric urologist was close-by (from our earlier alert to her) and arrived in just minutes to take Javier to the OR. The race was on to save his testicle.
After establishing the diagnosis, I had a chance to go spend some time with Javier and his family. Javier and his uncle were well-versed in English, but his father wasn't. Fortunately, his uncle did a fantastic job of translating and by the end of our conversation, Javier's father had given permission to surgically repair Javier's testicle.
Poor Javier, though, was crying inconsolably now, probably as much from the fear of the unknown as from the pain of his testicle. More morphine, please.
I should have saved my drawings explaining the testicular torsion from that day. If I may say so, they were beautiful. Stunning, actually...NOT. They were a complete mess, like most of my attempts at drawing are. I should probably spend more time at home practicing how to draw a realistic testicle, so I'll be ready the next time. I would just need to be very careful about where I leave these practice drawings lying around. And who knows, maybe with a little practice I'll become the male version of Georgia O'Keefe!
What explanation Javier and his family understood best, though, was my fist and my attempt to rotate it. They understood that this "was not good" for the testicle. Bad, actually. To reinforce the seriousness of the situation, I brought a medical book into the room and was able to show them a legitimate picture of the testicle and how it had rotated on itself.
I have great news to share with you, though. Javier still has two functioning testicles! Oh, he sure does! Yes, yes--of course I'll wait for the cheers to die down. After the pediatric urologist made her scrotal incision, she was able to unrotate Javier's testicle and it immediately "pinked-up," meaning blood-flow had been reestablished. She later shared that his testicle probably survived this long because of two reasons; 1) his testicle rotated only a couple times, and loosely at that, and 2) the rotations probably didn't completely cut off his blood supply and a trickle flow of blood may have sustained the testicle. Lucky ball! She tacked it down so that this would hopefully not happen again to brave Javier. Yep, a suture from his testicle to his scrotum (did I mention this already?).
Regardless, I'm just happy that Javier can still face his world with two functioning balls. Let's face it--there is a reason we call them "jewels," and, as any guy will testify, it's better to face the world with two of them instead of one.
If things hadn't worked out for Javier, though, he would still have had one functioning testicle and worse things than that exist. I'm just glad that, in a few years, he won't have to go pick out a life-like prosthesis. Hmmm--decisions, decisions. A steel ball? Wooden? Saline-filled? I personally would go for the steel ball, after living through residency. Come to think of it, though, imagine what a chick-magnet a ten-pound prosthetic testicle could have been for Javier, regardless of what it was made of!
Initially, I thought we had helped Javier win The Amazing Race, saving his testicle and all. But after thinking the prosthesis thing through, maybe not.
Sorry, buddy.
Hats off to Javier for being a brave little boy. As always, thanks for reading. The last round of comments were very cool. Next post will be Wednesday, January 20.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
