Alexander Miller vividly remembers the day he lost his testicle and the lesson it taught him about life.
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I was still in the Navy when I lost my right testicle nine years ago. I remember it like it was nine years ago.
While sitting at home, watching the Super Bowl, I felt a dull pain. Then it was sharp, spicy. Then it was a flame broiled medley of agony inside my pants. I vomited multiple times while I clutched my genitals.
When I could eventually look down at my balls, I saw that one of them was the size of a walnut shell. I called 9-1-1 when I could speak.
“Hello, 9-1-1,” the operator said.
I said, through clenched teeth, “I need help, now!”
“What’s the matter, sir?”
Why did I need to explain that I wouldn’t be calling if one of my gonads wasn’t about to explode out of its sack?
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“Balls…on…fire…!” My mind screamed out at this woman. Why couldn’t she just know what was wrong and send over the EMTs? Why did I need to explain that I wouldn’t be calling if one of my gonads wasn’t about to explode out of its sack?
She was adamant. “Please, sir. I need you to tell me what’s wrong. Do your best.”
“My…nut…is…about…to…pop.” I was out of breath. Sweat splashed off me. Stars and stripes danced across my vision. And I felt I might need to hurl again. After a few more agonizing minutes, I managed to almost give her my address.
“Down Virginia Beach, make a left?” I thought, but couldn’t quite remember. “Take that to Baker, make a right.” Gasp, groan, dry-heave. “Next is Orchard…right. I’m at apartment 402?”
My brain flickered, crackled, fizzled. The paramedics arrived some 25 minutes later, right before I blacked out.
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Doctors are funny sometimes. Not funny ha-ha,but funny, holy crap where did you get your medical degree from, Wossamotta U? Going in, I remember doctors testing me for everything from a hernia, to mumps, to neurological impairments. It was ultimately determined that a testicular torsion was to blame for the loss of what I once thought was a much-needed appendage.
According to someone much smarter than me, blood couldn’t get to the gonad due to the torsion (fancy word for twist) and therefore couldn’t receive oxygen. This mostly-random event is somewhat common, although, I’ve never known a man it happened to. I was just unlucky enough to have suffered a little too long for my testicle to be saved.
The surgery to remove the then-golf ball-sized testicle was less than an hour, but I felt the pain from it for weeks. And one of the first thoughts I had was, “I’m no longer a man.” It was almost as if Superman hurled the planet into an asteroid field: hope was lost. I fell into a deep depression for days because of a lost sense of masculinity.
I remember being in a hospital bed, immediately after the surgery, and pondering what they had done to me. Doctors seemed fairly tight-lipped around me. I wasn’t certain if that was to refrain from allowing some catastrophe escape (like maybe I had no balls instead of just one), or if I couldn’t hear what they’d said because of the sea of fluids they’d slipped into my IV. I rarely stayed coherent for 3 hours at a time.
And then there was that pain I keep forgetting about. I can’t believe I didn’t mention the pain…how silly of me. A constant reminder of something I doubt I could ever forget. I remember being bathed in sweat, you know, that nasty, slimy kind that makes your stomach turn every time you think about it. It’s that kind.
Without those surgeries, my testicle would have burst, my temperature spiked, and I most assuredly would have succumbed to any number of things.
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I’d writhe in agony for more meds. But they never overdid it. And I loathed them for it. I all at once hated, appreciated, and was unmoved toward the work the doctors had done on me.
Without those surgeries, my testicle would have burst, my temperature spiked, and I most assuredly would have succumbed to any number of things. I’m thankful for the life those doctors gave me.
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As I became more comfortable with myself again, which took time because I was very self-conscious, I learned to live with what I had, and even love it. In the beginning, there was a quite noticeable difference between the two sides of my scrotum.
I would often check myself out, per doctor’s order, but also because I needed to see how it looked. It felt a certain way, and it looked another way. I felt a stinging tug on the sack that was constant, and I saw a frowning grandma on one side, and a smooth, amoeba-like blob on the side without the testicle.
I checked each morning on my package, like some kind of squirrel double-checking to see what his nuts have been up to since yesterday’s harvest. This was a five-month process. I stopped checking the day I could no longer see a visible difference between my non-ball side and the actual ball side. I forget often that it’s no longer there.
I know that there’s less “jelly” down there, but it feels natural. In fact, my ex-girlfriends couldn’t tell a difference until I told them about my issue.
Women find it cute. And they’ll often treat me as a poster-child for “damaged goods”, which is something I honestly don’t mind because I am damaged. I can do every single thing a regular guy can do, plus, I can still have children when the day comes. I truly am a one nut wonder.
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Photo Credit: MaloMalverde/flickr
Exact same thing happened to me. Like rinse repeat. Been 6 months now.. it sucks but i need to get over it.. still struggling . some days i totally forget .. some days it just hits hard. Problem is I can feel it when having sex.. tough one but congrats on getting over it
They do make prosthetics, ya know, if you miss having a more symmetrical situation. This scenario was a side-plot in one of the later seasons of Scrubs, if I remember correctly.