Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Lay Across My Big Brass Bed

Watching an episode of The Office recently, I was thinking of the genuine comedy that exists in various real life situations, whether it be in an office, a lift or elsewhere. Walking down the street and changing direction several times to avoid another passerby can be extremely funny.

All these thoughts brought me back to September of last year, when I was involved in a similar comedic moment. At the time, it was horrific, but I can look back now and smile about it.

The first part of the story involves a dreaded discovery for all men; a swelling on the testes, or as doctors like to call it, a lump on the balls. A shocking discovery to say the least. I went through the various stages that I'm sure all men do on discovery of such a phenomena.

Stage 1: Denial - Simply ignore the fact it's there, check again next month and hopefully it will be gone.

Stage 2: Acceptance of your new friend. It didn't go away, so looks like we're gonna be partners for a while. There's no way it could be anything serious though. No way.

Stage 3: The Oh Shit stage. This is when it starts to get worrying. You think about it and all that goes through your head is "Oh Shit, this could be testicular cancer. Eek."

Stage 4: Planning the visit to the doctor. I've spoken to a few people who've been in similar situations, albeit with different afflictions (namely thrush and a few other genital nasties!) and the general consensus is that the thought of having your manly bits inspected by another guy is somewhat nauseating.

Stage 5: The visit to the doctor.

On entering the doctors surgery, he started off with the usual jibber jabber; how's my health, do I smoke, exercise, do drugs? He then asked why I'd booked the appointment. I explained the discovery of my new little friend. "Oh" he says, "we'll have a look at that in a minute". Super.

He then proceeded to do a test on all my vital organs. I started to relax a little. "Your heart is fine. Lungs are fine. All the vitals are grand". Excellent. "Now can you just lie down on the bed there and take off your trousers and underwear"?

Sweet fucking Jesus. One minute the lungs are fine and now this fucker is asking me to get naked. Oh my God.

What ensued was possibly the most awkward moment of my life. Lieing in a stone cold doctor's surgery, bollok naked, he takes a seat right beside me. Out comes the rubber glove. I start to feel queasy. OMFG please don't put that where I think it's going. Please. He slips the glove on like a seasoned pro, and proceeds in feeling each of my balls.

To liven things up a little, he started asking me random questions, trying desperately to relieve the nervous tension in the room. Nothing like some small talk to take my mind off things. 5 minutes seemed like an eternity. And then, as if spoken by Jesus himself, I hear the words "Right, you can get dressed again". Pheewww. Breathe deep. Swallow. Ok. We're done.

He tells me that I'll need to go for an ultrasound in St. Vincents ASAP. Happy days, another fun-filled day to pen into the diary.

Later on, I had a conversation with my girlfriend that went something like this:

Her: Would you not get aroused in a situation like that?
Me: No, there's something about a man feeling my balls that doesn't quite float my boat.
Her: Well what if it was a hot nurse doing it?
Me: NO. Somebody checking your balls for testicular cancer is surprisingly unarousing. FFS are you thick?
Her: Oh. Sorry.

In fact, dearest readers, I made a startling discovery that day. I like to refer to it as the "anti-boner". I'll say no more.

My trip to the hospital was just as much of a hoot.

It involved:

1. A 6 hour wait
2. A crazy old woman in wheelchair screaming for help while being restrained by hospital staff
3. Lots of lubricating jelly spread on my kidneys and nutsack
4. Lots of gas (the doctors couldn't see my kidneys using the ultrasound, as my stomach was filled with gas. I was absolutely dying to fart for the whole examination but didn't want to be rude!)
5. Puzzled faces.

Number 5 was almost certainly the most horrifying moment of my life. The first doctor left halfway through the exam with a baffled look on his face. He came back with Dr. no 2. He then gave my bits the once over. The 2 consulted and left the u/s room together looking equally perplexed.

My heart dropped. I went into a cold sweat. OMG they've just found tumors on my balls and kidneys. OMFG, I'm going to have to get chemotherapy. OMFG I'm going to have to get a ball removed. These were just a few of the million different thoughts that suddenly whizzed through my head.

10 minutes they left me there. Stark naked on a hospital bed with ice cold lubricating jelly slowly starting to set on my body. I felt like I was on Candid Camera.

Eventually the two arrived back with a senior doctor. He carried out the screening process again. After some time, the 3 had a group meeting, lots of whispers and medical jargon being thrown left, right and centre.

After the group conference, they explained that all the bits were in working order, no tumors, just that one of my kidneys was out of place (apparently this is quite common). No medical reprecussions.

I cleaned myself with a towel, got dressed and breathed a deep sigh of relief while wiping the tiniest tear from my eye, before walking out to tell the girlfriend the good news.

Hiphip fcuking hooray. All that stress for nothing.

If I ever decide to become a boxer i'll have a big edge on the competition!

1 Comments:

Blogger Alex Martin said...

Hi Ian, superb post, definitely your best to date. I nearly pissed myself in the office with laughter.
You still playing on Tribeca?

5:27 AM  

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