Hurry Up and Wait
“Hurry up and wait!” If you’ve ever served in the military, you’re all too familiar with this phrase, and to be honest the only time I really thought I’d be saying it was in uniform. That was until all of this began and I was in and out of doctor’s offices. Now I’m not saying this to whine or complain about it. This blog is to obviously tell my story and my experiences during this, but my biggest hope is that someone who finds themselves in a similar situation can read this and learn what might lay ahead of them and they can prepare themselves for the process. Now lets pick up where I left off.
As the days went on I started to notice a pain in my lower back. It wasn’t that bad so again I found myself thinking that maybe I just strained too hard while trying to lift something heavy. It would kind of come and go so I did my best to ignore it and keep working on the mission at hand. I kept telling myself that the physical was just around the corner and I would be able to get it checked out then.
Finally, the day I was waiting for came. It was my second day back to work after my AT (Annual Training), Tuesday August 24th, 2021. This was supposed to be just a routine physical, I just got new health insurance and was meeting my new primary care physician. To be honest, even at the age of 28 I was kind of nervous. Not only for what I might be told is going on with my enlarged testicle, but also because for the first time in my life I had a female doctor. I know what you’re thinking right now, grow up. I knew full well that she was a doctor, she’s just going to be doing her job, but at the same time it was just an unfamiliar concept to me to have someone (of the opposite gender) I wasn’t romantically involved with seeing me without pants on. Regardless, I get over it and the routine physical goes smoothly; breathing is normal, blood pressure and pulse are good, my heart sounds good, weight could be better but Covid got the better of me in that department, and so on. At the end of it she asks me if I have any questions or concerns, and I hesitate.
“Do I really want to bring this up? What if it’s nothing? It’s probably nothing anyways. It could go away.”
These are all of the things that I’m telling myself in that moment of hesitation. Why’d I hesitate? Honestly I don’t know. I’ve never really been shy about my health. In fact I kind of always prided myself on wanting to take care of my body and knowing what’s going on. But for the first time I hesitated.
“Actually, uhm there is one thing. I noticed that my right testicle has gotten a little bit bigger. I noticed it about a week and a half ago.”
“Okay, lets have a look.”
I pull my pants down to about mid thigh as she puts her gloves on. I look up to the ceiling hoping that this ends as quickly as possible. I feel one finger lightly poke at my testicle and then that was it. She takes her gloves off and throws them away. I was taken aback a little, I mean I wasn’t expecting her to spend all day down there but I also wasn’t expecting the least amount of contact possible.
She tells me it could be any number of things;
Hydrocele - When fluid collects around the testicle to cause swelling.
Varicocele - Enlargement of the veins in the scrotum.
Epididymitis - Inflammation of the tube at the back of the testicle that carries and stores sperm.
Orchitis - Inflammation in one or two of the testicles caused by a viral or bacterial infection, most commonly from a sexually transmitted infection.
She tells me she’ll order some blood work for the lab and for me to get an ultrasound done. I was to call the next day to get the ultrasound scheduled. And so the waiting begins. The next day I call to get my ultrasound scheduled and the scheduler tells me there are no orders yet, and to wait until they call me back when they get the orders. Monday comes and I get a call from the scheduling department telling me that I can schedule my ultrasound. The next available appointment? This Friday.
“Okay, I’ll take it.”
My situation still isn’t so bad so I’m not worrying too much about the waiting. I’ve noticed a little growth in my testicle and some slightly increased pain in my testicle and in my lower back, but again I do my best to ignore it and to keep going about my way. Later that day we find out that we have work Tuesday day and then come back during the night for a concrete pour we’re doing. At this point the only person who knew what was going on was Shannon. I hadn’t told work about my situation because I didn’t want to make it a thing before it was a thing. So since I would work both Tuesday day and night I wouldn’t have to come in on Wednesday. So instead of having to ask for some time off that Friday, I called the scheduler back to see if there was any cancellations for Wednesday. I was in luck, they were able to get me in.
Remember when I said I was a little nervous to have a female doctor? Well if I only knew was was in store for me. I show up for my ultrasound appointment, wait for some time in the waiting room, get called back, follow this nurse down some hallways to where I’m greeted by the diagnostic medical sonographer who happens to be a woman. She takes me into this dark, tiny room where there’s just the table, the computer, screen, and transducer.
“When I step out, you can take off your pants, take this towel (she rolls up a small towel like a burrito) tuck it between your legs and prop your testicles on top of it. Then take this towel and lay your penis up towards your stomach and cover it. Then you can cover the rest of your legs with this sheet.”
She steps out and I do as I was instructed. I am now laying down flat with my testicles exposed through a series of towels and a sheet in a dark room. It kind of felt like a scene from one of those Saw movies was about to happen. She comes back into the room and starts playing with the machine, and then it gets quite for a second. “Spurt” she squirts the gel on the wand and begins. I have never felt more awkward in my entire life. After she started she didn’t utter a single word to me. It was all business and silence with her. After an eternity or 20 minutes depending on how you round she finishes up and tells me that I should have my results by the end of the week. The rest of the week goes by and I don’t hear anything. So I decide to call on Monday to see if I have results ready. No results ready, my doctor will call me when they come in. Wednesday, September 8th, 2021 comes and I get a phone call.
“Hi Henry, this is your doctor, I just wanted to call you back with the results of your ultrasound. They found a mass in your testicle..”
The ultrasound results where they found the mass.
You know those scenes in movies and tv shows when a character will zone out and then they can’t seem to hear anything and they can’t focus on what’s going on around them when they get bad news or are in shock? Well I always thought that was kind of fake until it happened to me. Now don’t get me wrong, hearing that they found a mass wasn’t a death sentence, but I also wasn’t expecting it so when I heard it I went blank, I knew she was still talking but I couldn’t hear her. I forced myself out of it, I had her repeat it all to me. She gave me the information for some urologists and told me to reach out to them asap to get seen.
I get off the phone with my doctor and I try not to go into panic mode. I pace around for a few minutes. I tell Shannon what I was just told, and then I finally decide to call my parents and tell them what’s going on with me. I get all of the questions from them but can offer no answers beyond what I’ve been told, which wasn’t much. I call the urologist’s office up to get an appointment, they tell me the next available appointment is on Thursday, September 23rd 2021. 2 weeks and 2 days away from then. I know I’m not the only person in the world let alone the area that needs to see a doctor, but at the same time hearing you have a mass in your testicle and then you have to wait almost 2 and a half weeks before we’ll see you is a hard pill to swallow (Its also a lot of time to start Googling and looking things up on WebMd). To say my mood soured over the rest of that day is an understatement. Being at work was the last place I wanted to be, but I still didn’t tell anyone there. I waited until the next day. I just wanted to be able to process it all before I got more questions to which I didn’t have answers to. I informed my two immediate bosses of what was going on and what could happen depending on how the appointment with the urologist goes.
By now my situation is starting to get worse. I’ve noticed that my testicle is starting to get really big and that the pain in my lower back is worsening and now I’m having pain in my groin and lower abdomen. I’m absolutely miserable and in so much pain. I still go to work and power through, but I find myself needing to sit down to try to relieve the pain I’m in. I give the urologist’s office a call to see if there was any chance of getting my appointment moved up. The best they could manage was two days sooner, September 21st, 2021, I of course took it hoping that I could make it there with no more issues than I was already having.
I wake up and look at my phone. its 4:36 am. Its Saturday, September 18th, 2021, its Drill weekend, but fortunately its a Virtual Drill (a concept that was implemented in the wake of Covid). I quietly get out of bed and go to the living room and lay on the couch. I didn’t have to be awake for a few more hours but my pain is at an all time high. I can’t even lay down without being in pain. Shannon doesn’t wake up for a few hours, not knowing where I disappeared to. She walks out to me cringing in pain on the couch. I know she knows that I’m not okay, but I try to act like I am. I get my orders for the day, complete this classes and stand by. So I stubbornly get through all of the classes that the Army wants me to complete. At this point I text one of my oldest friends, who happens to be a doctor, about the situation. He also happens to live out of state so he asked for me to send him a video of my testicles so he can get an idea. His response tells me everything I need to know. He was trying not to scare me, but was ultimately telling me it doesn’t look good. I pull up my pants, walk out to Shannon and ask her to take me to the emergency room.
By now even walking is causing me pain. My testicle is at an all time large and I’m ready for them to just take it out. We get to the emergency room and for the first time I had a wait that was less than 2 hours. They take us into our own little area to wait for a doctor to come see us. In the mean time they take some blood and then give me some pain medication. Finally I get some relief from the pain. A little while later they come and take me to my favorite activity, another ultrasound. This time was a little different. I sure as shit ended up in the same dark tiny room, but I was ready this time. I knew what to do like a professional. I won’t lie either, this time around I fell asleep during it. I was on pain medicine and I had been up since 4:30 am in pain. Laying me down in a dark quite room was just asking me to fall asleep.
The results from my 2nd ultrasound.
Finally I’m seen by a doctor in the ER, he examines my testicle, tells me that the urologist on call is actually the one I’m going to be seeing in 3 days and he’ll see me then. The doctor tells me that they saw elevated levels of white blood cell count in my blood, and he’ll prescribe me some painkillers and an anti-inflammatory for pain management and I’m sent on my way.
September 21st, 2021, the long awaited day finally arrives. I head over to the urologists office to finally meet the doctor and see what he thinks is going on with me. It’s not too long of a wait once I’m there. I get called back and put in a room. A few minutes I hear a knock on the door. The doctor walks in and introduces himself.
“So, what did they tell you in the emergency room?”
“Well to be honest not much of anything, they said my white blood cell count was high and that’s about it.”
“Oh, well it looks like we’ve got a lot to cover then. Come here and look at this on my computer (he points to some images). See that there? That’s cancer.”