No. 49: My Movember Moment

Here is a story you might want to skip over. Feel free to just press delete. It’s hard to imagine any circumstance where a story about testicles goes down well but, this being Movember month, I thought I would share it. For the unaware, Movember is an international campaign to raise awareness of testicular and prostate cancer. It involves men (and women? Let’s not be sexist) growing moustaches during the month of November for charity.

My story starts at a recent Bupa health check-up. All was going well until they asked if I wanted to have my testicles checked. Why not, I thought. On went the rubber gloves, down came my trousers. For the next 5 minutes a lady in her late 50s squeezed and prodded in a way that really shouldn’t be allowed. She noted that one hangs higher than the other. This is normal I have now learnt, apparently the left testicle is usually the lower one. Who would have guessed? (I can safely guarantee that every male reading this is, right now, having a quick feel to check themselves).

Anyway my doctor declared that I needed a scan. My right testicle ‘didn’t feel right’. I pointed out it had always felt like that but she wasn’t persuaded. She put on her ‘this is serious’ face and told me I needed a proper scan within 10 days. So last night I found myself at Epsom Hospital.

Here a man smeared some sort of jelly over my balls and then proceeded to spend 15 minutes taking pictures of them with his special handheld ultrasonic device. It’s the sort of thing that I am sure some people pay good money for. Not me. I found myself missing the touch of my earlier older, substantially more gentle, female doctor.

As you might imagine, I made cumbersome jokes about how after four children and a vasectomy 13 years ago I no longer needed them. He didn’t crack a smile. He merely stated that I had hydroseals and cysts. This didn’t sound good. I was briefly worried. He then went on to say that this was typical of someone of my age, that every 45 year old male on the planet had them, and there was nothing I could do about it anyway. He finished by saying that if they ever hurt then they could ‘cut it out’.

I wasn’t sure what his ‘it’ referred to. I didn’t want to ask. I wiped myself down, got dressed and left, feeling like I had be slightly infringed and interfered with.

Somewhere on the servers of Epsom Hospital there are detailed images of my balls. I hope they make good use of them.