You know the best part about getting older? No, neither do I.
But until I can be cryogenically frozen and thawed out a thousand years later when people live to be 2,000 years old, I must contend with the fact that now, in my early 50s, things will break now and then.
In this case, man things.
A month or so ago I noticed a sensation in my groin. It wasn’t the pleasant kind brought on by lascivious thoughts, it was more of a persistent and annoying pressure. It felt like I had to pee all the time, whether I had to or not. It even felt like I had to poop a lot, which I didn’t. I tried to put this phantom pressure out of mind but in the end, it was too persistent and so I went to my doctor.
He scheduled blood and urine tests, with a tentative prognosis of prostatitis, (infected prostate, which I’ve had a few times before but not recently). He warned that the blood test would test for prostate cancer and often came back with false positives, so I wasn’t to freak out. At least not right away.
I delayed on getting the tests done because I am a man and men are like that. I finally did and almost immediately after I began experiencing new symptoms, namely a pressure or cramping in my lower abdomen as if whatever it was had started to spread. This alarmed me. After a shower, I fondled my crotch in a non-lascivious way and found the left testicle had a neighbor and it wasn’t the right testicle. It was a hard lump of something or other. I was pretty sure my crotch (or any crotch) is not meant to have a hard lump of something or other in it and was even further alarmed.
My follow-up appointment with my doctor (to discuss the test results) wasn’t until April 6 because he was on vacation. I didn’t want to wait nearly two more weeks while the unwelcome lump of something or other cuddled up to my left testicle, so I called the doctor’s office and they scheduled me to see another doctor today at another one of their clinics. He would have the test results.
The good news is the test results came out negative. The doctor said a prostate infection seemed unlikely. He speculated that I might have an overactive bladder. I nodded in my head because I’ve often thought my bladder is about ten times smaller than average based on how often I need to pee (I even tested for diabetes a few times because of the frequency). He recommended that I avoid beverages in the evening and see if it made a difference. As I write this it is 10:19 p.m. and I have a glass filled with diet soda next to me.
I had pizza tonight. It made me thirsty!
And I’m a man. Men are kind of dumb about these things (I’ll do better tomorrow, I promise.)
I then mentioned the lump of something or other and the doctor told me to drop my drawers so he could cop a feel. He used somewhat more professional language.
He confirmed the obvious–I had what seemed to a cyst where a cyst should not be. Well, a cyst really shouldn’t be, period. He said he was going to schedule an ultrasound and they would let me know when and where.
Medical sonography (ultrasonography) is an ultrasound-based diagnostic medical imaging technique used to visualize muscles, tendons, and many internal organs, to capture their size, structure and any pathological lesions with real time tomographic images.
Pathological lesions. Hooray!
Anyway, I’m not really alarmed since being alarmed will not actually change anything. I actually feel better than I did yesterday because the initial test results are clean and the unwelcome lump of something or other is getting probed.
What I’m trying not to think about is the inevitable plan to remove it. It’s tempting to enter “how are cysts removed” into a Google search but I’d like to sleep tonight (trips to the loo to pee notwithstanding).
Anyway, this concludes more of getting old. It’s always an adventure, like a dark ride that gets stuck partway through, probably next to one of the speakers blasting awful looping music.
