Thankfully, the reclining chair in the ultrasound room is full-length. The technician has healthy, wrinkle-free skin, and if she were 15 years younger and at one of the bars last night, then I’d have tried to talk to her.
“I’ll leave the room so you can take down your trousers and underwear. Then you’ll get under that sheet so we can start the ultrasound.”
She keeps her promise, so I keep mine, although it bothers me that people here keep referring to my pants as trousers. Next, they’ll start calling my lump a growth.
The technician knocks and comes in with another paper-cotton, disposable sheet. The sheets look rumpled, but I can tell she’s folded them precisely as she tapes my penis to my stomach, leaving my balls exposed along the fold. She smears my sac with a generous amount of gel and guides her vibrating wand over my scrotum. I wonder if this could become erotic if we maintained eye contact. Instead, we give lip service to the holidays and watch the imaging screen. The screen doesn’t tell me anything and neither do her facial expressions.
“The Doctor will have the final say on this. I’ll step out while you get cleaned up and put your trousers back on.”
Not too bad – so far, my day has involved my pants becoming trousers and cleaning myself up. Upstairs waiting room again before I’m back with the Doctor in the room with the all purpose chair.
“Looking at the ultrasound, it’s definitely a tumor. We’re going have to remove the right testicle. We should do the surgery today, since that needs to be out as soon as possible. If you were my son, I’d have you go in today.” The Doctor looks like he just backed over my dog with his pickup truck.
I think we are sitting, but somehow we are now leaning against the counter and facing that twisted chair. Everything’s fuzzy except for the chair – that goddamn-no-good-fucking-son-of-a-bitch-rotten chair
I say “OK” a lot. When I can’t talk, I start nodding.
“When’s the last time you had something to eat and drink?” he asks.
I try to stay 7:30, even though I don’t know if that’s true. It’s the only time I can think of right now.
Plop. Plop. I’m stuck between admiration for how precisely my eyes can squeeze out tears and anger for how easily I let them come. The Doctor pats my shoulder and leaves me in the room to compose myself.
I finally remember what happened between sitting on the chair and leaning against the counter. The Doctor was giving me the details of the surgery. He assured me they wouldn’t cut into the scrotum; they don’t even want to have surgical instruments near the femoral area. Instead, he told me they would make an anal incision and pull the testicle out that route. Wait… what!? Adrenaline consumes the last vestiges of my hangover.
It takes me a full minute to remember how to use the tissues. I don’t think to stuff some extra tissues in my pants become trousers because I can’t think past my lump become tumor. I open the door and leave the room with the horrible chair. A digital clock on a cubicle corridor desk tells me that it’s almost 10:30. The Doctor looks nervous that there’s a blubbering mess let loose in his ward.
“We just paged your father, and he gave us a number to call,” a matronly, silver-haired Nurse assures me. She cups my elbow.
At this point, I should mention that my Dad works in the same hospital as a Gastroenterologist. I’m privileged in that capacity. I’m lucky; most people, insurance or not, wouldn’t be getting such speedy healthcare. How fast? Just wait.
My Dad is a good man. Our complexions are different; he’s lighter complexioned, but our statures and many other physical characteristics are similar. That’s descriptive, I know. Anyway, my Dad has taken to riding a Segway down the corridors, the hospital highways. He doesn’t do this for the joy of traveling effortlessly or a zero turning radius. One of his ankles is fused and the other ankle has been injured many times. Despite the curiosity and mixed comments from the hospital inhabitants, he rides with confidence.
OK, back to the silver-headed nurse cupping my elbow. Think Marshmallow. She isn’t huge, but everything about her is white and smooth: teeth, face, hair, arms, shirt. I can’t remember the color of her pants, but I’m going to go ahead and say those were white too.
Nurse Marshmallow steers me into an alcove filled with four cubicle desks, similar to those in the corridor but with more personal effects. I plop down at a desk in a corner. She leaves and comes back quickly with a number on a scrap of carbon paper. It’s a number I don’t recognize to somewhere in the hospital. I call on the desk phone, it rings, and it goes to a voicemail of a woman’s voice. I can’t comprehend words.
I flip open my cell phone; the battery symbol has one flashing bar. I call my girlfriend. She’s a beautiful, skinny but curvy, black girl - super elegant and probably out of my league in some areas, but we love each other. Our boyfriend-girlfriend days are probably in their last phase before we travel different, but still friendly paths. She came to my parents’ house for Christmas and the day after but left two days ago to visit her Mom in Ohio.
Her phone rings and goes to voicemail. I’ve been doing a halfway decent job of holding myself together until I try to talk. The first message I leave is wordless, just me sputtering and my throat catching. I erase the message and start over. The second time around, I manage to spout something about having a tumor and needing to get surgery. I think it makes sense.
Nurse Marshmallow comes back in holding paperwork.
“When was the last time you had anything to eat or drink?” she asks as she sets the papers on the desk.
Why does everyone keep asking me that? I’m about to lose my right nut, and they want to know what I had for breakfast. Yeah, I like my toast slightly burnt, orange juice with extra pulp, and eggs yolky. I’m glad we could have this conversation. By the way, have you been getting enough fiber? What the fuck!?
A combination of the paperwork and the Nurse talking help me realize that this is a question associated with anesthesia. They don’t want to put me in a coma or have me wake up while my testicle is being dragged out my anus. That being settled, I have a way out, another day to cradle my diseased ball.
“Well I only had some water this morning, but I was drinking pretty heavily last night. That probably won’t go well with the anesthesia, right?” I say.
“Doesn’t matter, as long as you don’t have any food in your stomach,” she replies.
Jesus Christ on a bicycle!
Nurse Marshmallow relentlessly reads the disclaimer/waiver legal speak for the upcoming surgery. I nod, although I’m not really following.
Finally, she breaks character. “Do you want a hug?” I do. It’s unsatisfying, more like a pat on the back.
“Can I have another hug?” I hold this hug for longer, but it’s still an awkward shoulder clasp. I’m seated and she’s standing, but I try to make the most of it.
“I’d like to have you put on my church prayer list. Is that fine with you?”
I tell Nurse Marshmallow that would be OK. I actually like the idea of an entire congregation unknowingly praying over my junk. She leaves the office alcove to let me read the paper work.
The paper tells me about the possible complications of anesthesia. I don’t really read the fine print, since I know that I’m going to sign the form anyway. At the top of the form is a line to fill in the type of surgery to be performed. Someone has written “Removal of Right Testical.”
Testical!? I won’t stand for this insult. If they can’t spell testicle correctly, how do I know if they’ll even remove the right one? I consider crossing out the word and giving it the correct spelling, but I panic that may create confusion. Someone will see that word crossed out; their mind will automatically assume that Right should be Left, and by the end of the day, I’ll be a Eunuch.
Flip out cell phone – I call my girlfriend again and leave a slightly more coherent voicemail with less gasping pauses. I decide to text instead: “Lump is a tumor. Surgery to remove my right ball today.”
Nurse Marshmallow stops by the doorway, takes the paperwork, and tells me that my father’s on the phone. For some reason, I have to move to the other desk and receive the call on that phone.
I can’t remember our exact conversation, but my Dad tells me about one of his friends who had the same condition. That friend has kids today. When he mentions kids, I lose it again. That was the one thing that I was trying not to think about.
My Dad lets me know that he’ll be coming over to the Urology department to take me to the surgery center. I wait in the office for another 15 minutes, before Nurse Marshmallow comes back in.
“You know, you can meet your father at the surgery building if that works better.”
I think that’s her way of telling me to buck up and get on with it. I realize that no one’s been sitting at the desks and doing work. They’ve been patient, but now I’m becoming an inconvenience. I nod and tell her that I’ll move to the waiting room.
On the way out, I see the Urologist sitting at one of the corridor desks. I shake his hand.
“Any questions for me?” he asks.
“Yes sir, what are the chances that I’ll get to keep the other one?” I say.
“Oh, your chances are great. There’s next to zero probability that you’ll have problems with that one,” he replies. The Doctor looks trapped. I realize later that it must be pretty awkward to talk with a guy whose ball you’ll be surgically removing in a few hours.
The TV in the waiting room is set to a FOX channel and playing one of those horrible, daytime show with obnoxious female hosts. I can feel myself getting stupider, and I finally understand the urge that drives some to buy a high-powered rifle, find a clock tower, and just start firing.
I’m thinking that fire-bombing that show’s studio might be an extreme option compared to changing the channel when my Dad glides in on his Segway. He flows past me.
“Dad… Dad…Dad!”
“I heard you the first time,” he says as the Segway pivots.
The diameter of that contraption’s base make it awkward for traveling down the waiting room aisles, so I follow him back into the Urology clinic. We both talk to the Urologist again. My Dad asks better, medical-based questions, but the answers just reaffirm the need for surgery. I also find out from my Dad’s pronunciation that the doctor will be making an “inguinal” rather than an anal incision. I rub my butt in relief. Damn Southern accents – the inguinal incision is basically a bikini line cut that allows them to drag the ball from my sac rather than cutting the sac itself.
My Dad and I hug for ten seconds, and when we pull away, his face crumples for three seconds before regaining control. His parental concern gives him a youthful handsomeness.
There’s something about another person being sad for you that makes it enough. What I’m saying is I’m surprised that I’m now dry-eyed and composed. As I follow his Segway to the elevator and through the parking structure to the surgery building, I feel like a prisoner marching to his execution. Instead of “Dead man walking”, the guards and inmates are chanting “No balls knocking.”
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