You're twisting my melons (balls) man
So when I was about 13-14ish I was suffering from a recurring (every couple of weeks or so) swelling and subsequent agony in my ballsack. Always the same side, tender and painful to touch, but always went away again after a few hours so I was fairly sure it wasn't cancer or anything horrible like that.

It was very unpleasant nonetheless, particularly for a (at that time) painfully shy me and it took me ages to actually tell my parents after a particularly sore and uncomfortable day.

My dad took me to Casualty and of course the swelling (and thus pain) had gone away by that point, but it was eventually diagnosed as a twisting ball which was causing a build up of fluid, blood I guess.

In fact I've just googled it for the first time ever and apparently it's called 'torsion of the testicle or testis' and is "a very common pediatric urologic emergency". Go me. Looks like I'm a little lucky it didn't twist itself to death.

Anyway, I digress. I had surgery on it to staple it down, painful, woke up with a big bloody patch under my balls (worse thing to wake up to?) and had to wear some sort of cod piece thingy for a few days but all healed and working well since.

My abiding memory of the whole episode is not the pain or the discomfort, or indeed the bloody mess my balls looked when I woke up. It's when a male nurse came in to see me as I was waiting for the surgery and asked if I needed any help "shaving my scrotum".

Um, no. I'll be ok thanks...
(Zutroy started without you, Fri 30 Jul 2010, 3:57, Reply)