2002-04-30 - 5:31 p.m.

Baby Steps, Part III

This is the last installment of what happened over a week ago. After the fiasco of Kaiser moving my appointment "ahead" by moving it backwards a month, I phoned my folks, asked Redwood to email a few friends and medicated myself and sat at home Tuesday. Shells finally made it up Tuesday, the pain was still incredible, but she drove up with some several days worth of dinners for me. We watched JAG, Ghost in the Shell, and the first DVD from the Star Blazers set. She left probably around 10 PM.

Wednesday my dad took off work to take me to the Kaiser facility and also be there in case they moved my appointment "forward" into 2003 or something stupid. (Yes, I�m very wary of them � as their only apology was "So sorry dude!")

Bronco made a list of questions for me, that I checked and modified. When we saw the doctor, he grabbed my list before I could ask it myself. I don�t know what to think of that. He never asked me to describe my pain, which I would think is important. Instead, he rudely, though expert like ran through my check list answering every question. Then he had me drop my pants. Checked my balls � with my dad watching. No big deal, as I�ve been naked in front of plenty of strangers. And I appreciated that he was there to make sure the doctor was actually looking for stuff. Then the doctor told me to bend over. Yup. Fortunately urologists are much quicker about this than other people. He had anal lube on my ass in a second and was out with minimal discomfort. And it is nice to know that my insides are OK.

But he said the strangest thing, "Wow, you are tense there too!" Well of course I am, many people are when you start sticking a finger up their butt! But I didn�t appreciate how he turned it into part of the problem too.

So here is what he said short version: "Grin and bear it." I asked if there was any antibiotics, pain killers, surgical treatment, or therapy � anything. Nope, nope, nope, nope � go to Europe he told me. Right, my body and him were in total disagreement.

The long story is I most certainly don�t have cancer and there will be no loss in my testicle size (that apparently is a slightly different problem). What happened is two months ago an infection did spread to my epididymis (sp?) and caused my significant pain. The pain was so great that my brain suddenly became aware of nothing but my right testicle, so my groin muscles reacted by getting tense and sucking my testicle up, up, up, all the way inside of me. He suggested that I basically am having terribly painful "menstrual" like cramps.

So PMS is bad, I already believed that. And I know it is different for different people. But 60+ days of pain there? I thought they should at least offer therapy or muscle relaxants. But he refused to do anything, because he said the pain will go away. In 6 to 18 months!

Right, like almost 2 years! My jaw dropped and I made him repeat this several times.

I actually believe that my body can do this � why? For the simple reason that I do feel tense. But so much pain from that? And no cure except a couple years of grinning and bearing it? God, I�d have no friends left after that.

So naturally I started remembering that Motrin IB is a wonderful muscle relaxant. I take 1 � 4 per day now. And I bought some bath salts and soak in a tub about 30 minutes to 45 minutes a day. Bath salts are incredible. And Redwood suggested I drink herbal teas � good thing I love the sleepy time tea. So I�m drinking 4 cups a day of that.

So I�ll slowly get better, but I�m not happy that Kaiser didn�t suggest any of this. The grin and bear it to me suggests that this doctor hasn�t experienced this pain. He did point out that when he was in the Air Force that he would have handed me two aspirin and a note to report to duty at 0800 hours. Funny thing, I don�t remember joining any of the US armed services, but I do specifically remember paying Kaiser to help me avoid pain.

LISTENING TO: the Frozen Autumn Fragments of Memories

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