In the early morning of the 6th December 2011, I awoke to a steady and painful feeling in my nether regions.  It was a new fresh pain altogether different from the run of the mill aching joints that one grows accustomed to in old age and emanating as it was from this new area which had remained trouble free for all my remembered life, it caused me a little concern.

Over the next few days I continued with my various tasks thinking it was just some muscular pain caused by an exuberant manoeuvre whilst lying between the sheets but gradually I realised that this pain was not muscular but something more complicated.  I ferreted around in this painful area for some seconds and swiftly realised that my right testicle was three times larger than my left one, almost reaching gobstopper proportions and the pain stretched from that swollen gonad through the middle of my body to my right kidney causing at times severe back ache.

I decided that I would have to see my doctor although my all embracing disbelief of all things Catholic made me think that this area was still taboo.  I plucked up courage, had a shower and whizzed down to the surgery to be first there that morning.  I was, with 30 minutes to spare and the standing in the cold awaiting his arrival made me wilt with the pain.  He arrived and brought me in, unzipped my trouser and with a wink and a leer, he squeezed the first one he came to whilst at the same time asking which was the affected one.  As I pulled myself off the ceiling I stuttered “the right one”.  He apologised at his oafishness and did agree that the right one was definitely out of place next to its more sedate and beansized left brother.

He suggested immediately that I sign myself in at Sligo hospital while they did some ultrasound treatment on my painful appendage.  I explained that I was on my way to Manchester for the Christmas holidays and my treatment in Sligo would have to wait.  He accepted my plans but booked me in for ultrasound in the New Year when I returned and prescribed anti-biotics and pain killers.

After a few days in Manchester with Christmas approaching and the anti-biotics seemingly not working but the pain killers were when I took them but I was loath to over a long period for fear of dependance, I asked my wife to drive me down to Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport.  It was the day before Christmas Eve, one of their medical staff was upstairs murdering patients by booby trapping saline solutions ( I think five by then had met their maker), I was downstairs in A&E in front of a very nice triage nurse feeling slightly embarrassed as I related my tale of woe.  She agreed my pain must be immense when she saw the strength of the painkillers I was taking.  “They are the next thing to morphine” she said.

Within five minutes of my triage interview I was talking to a doctor and I felt more relaxed.  He was a nice young chap, not long out of medical school, built like an international wing forward and from Pakistan.  Not a man to blush at my plight I thought but he was unsure how to approach this indecent area of the body.  His Islamic upbringing suggested that it was a sacred area and his medical training made him ask for a chaperone even though Helen, my dear wife of nearly 40 years, could be heard tittering in the corner of the room.

He called in a nurse, a young good looking girl, who he presumed would not be used to this situation.  I apologised for what she was about to endure but he gave her a towel which she had to hold at arms length so that it obstructed her view of my manly credentials, has he carefully removed my garments.  He saw for himself that things were not right or at least not as right as they should be bearing in mind it was the right one that was now approachin golf ball status.  He zipped me up, shooed away the nurse who had in no way improved her education and suggested I needed to see a Urologist which he would organise.  While we waited he took some blood samples and I gave him a sample of my urine which he then took to the laboratory.

I was ushered into a curtained cubicle, backstage of where I had been initially examined and a nurse told me to lie on a bench and await this Urologist chap.  A few minutes later the curtains parted and this vision of loveliness drifted through the drapes.  ”Ello, my name is Adelberta van der Kerkoff and I am the Registrar in the Urology Department” she said in a slightly but interestingly flawed local accent.  She was in her late 20s with long blonde hair and a figure to match.  She was clad in a white coat and judging by its shape and cut was obviously made up in some Parisian house of haute couture.  Her whole ensemble was set off beautifully with a pair of Jimmy Choo stilettos giving grace and definition to her splendidly profiled legs which were encased in a pair of gossamer thin fully fashioned nylon stockings.

After a few introductory remarks I gathered she had learnt her trade in Amsterdam and had come over to Stepping Hill to be finished in her art.  She unzipped me with experienced aplomb.  No need of a chaperone with this lady, she was confident enough to realise that I would not squeal and she quickly delved in to the affected area and for ten minutes she rumbustiously coddled the gifts God gave me, her manipulations were of a degree you could only dream about and with all her prodding and digital discoveries there was not one iota of pain.  She raised her sweating forehead and asked me to turn on my side and bring my knees up to my chin.  I could see she was warming to her task as she slowly unbuttoned her white sheath-like coat, revealing a pastel blue sleeveless blouse that nicely held in what was threatening to burst out.  This was finished off with a little black skirt that stopped short of her knees by more than a few inches.  She carefully hung up her white coat and pulled a  long latex glove from out of a drawer.  This type of glove I had last seen worn by a vet whilst artificially inseminating a cow in a field some months previously.  It reached almost to her shoulder.

“Do not worry” she said in this soft netherlandic inspired Stockport accent “but this might be slightly uncomfortable” and she proceeded to thrust the glove, infilled by her fingers, wrist and elbow, up my back passage.  Uncomfortable was not how I would describe it and I started to think how glad I was to be heterosexual as pain from her internal gropings racked my interns.  However after a few minutes of this intense massage, she withdrew and indicated her pleasure that everything in and up there was perfectly as it should be.

She expertly peeled off the long glove, threw it in a bin and told me to tidy myself up and we would talk.  She clad herself once more in her white coat and carefully did up her buttons before going off to get the lab results from my previous donations.  She returned and sat me down and told me my urine sample was perfect, possibly too much tonic with the gin and my blood held no secrets and showed my kidney function was top class.  She said in her very attractive lisping Hollandaise voice that she would like to admit me into her department to do some ultrasound tests to confirm her thoughts and if correct carry out a little procedure.  She said that she thought I had deddidichimus or a word like that.  The procedure would be simple and would entail slicing into the side of my scrotal sac and nipping off the cyst that was causing the pain and the swelling of my right goolie.  I said would I become monorchid and she smiled, the smile of the knowing and said that there was enough in my right one to make three or four others.

After receiving all this wonderful treatment I had to decline her offer.  Christmas was fast approaching and no way was I allowing myself to be incarcerated.  I had to endure and wait for my return to Ireland.  She sadly shook her blonde tresses and told me to be careful and come back to her at the slightest provocation and she gave me a report to give to my Irish doctor and with much reluctance we shook hands and parted.  I think we both enjoyed our little friendship and I had certainly been looked after better than I could ever expect.  Well done Stepping Hill.

Two weeks later after ultra-sound treatment at Sligo Hospital I reported back to the surgery.  The doctor looked at the report and said “no, you are OK, there is nothing wrong with you”.  Sardonically I said “tell my bollicks that” and disconsolately left the room.

It is now 26th February 2012 some 82 days after my affliction reared its head and although not as bad as it was it still gives me great discomfort.  So I decided to write down my tale of woe and let the nations of the world through my readers offer their diagnosis.  What in the name of everything that is Islamic, Catholic and Secular could be wrong with me.

I left the gathering after a couple of hours and went back to my daughter’s house in a very contemplative mood.  For reasons I will not bother you with, I had not seen the lady, my first cousin, for a number of years.  As you all grow up and move around and settle into a path of life, touch can easily be lost and this is what made this death all the harder for me.  At one time I was so close to her and her family and now I would not have recognized her in the street.  She died before I knew her and yet at one time I knew her well.  Somehow I had missed out on a good life and that is a big miss.

Away I came and the following morning was more than pleasantly surprised from a comment I received on a blog I wrote  on 12 January 2010 called The Importance of Blogs. I had just heard that Catherine, who has just died, was terminally ill and I dedicated this blog to her and her family.  It traced her mother’s  family tree back to the Famine in Ireland, it was a piece of their history they were unsure of because of their mother’s premature death, nearly 50 years ago.

This comment was from a lady who had just read this blog and realized that she was a second cousin of mine and Catherine’s, her grandfather and my grandmother were siblings.  She was from a branch of the family that had gone their separate ways in the 1930s and for whatever reason  touch had been lost.

That is why the blog is such an amazing and powerful tool if used properly.  You often think that once a piece has been posted, that is it, gone and forgotten, but the internet and blog field leaves it there like a bright shiny cherry on a tree waiting to be picked and eaten by passing strangers.  It is there for evermore, hopefully to be appreciated by everyone and that is what happened.  So now as one cousin goes another comes to light and hopefully will not disappear as quickly.

As I was writing these words this morning, there came news that  will only double my efforts in this field.  My daughter, Katy, has entered the final stages of pregnancy with the anticipation of twins.  She is slightly premature but the experts say that this is normal with multiple births and that mother and foeutuses are fine, with estimated weights of 5lb with still four weeks of cooking  to go.  However she will now have to go into hospital for their delivery,  a thing she dreads.  She was looking forward to a home birth and had an army of midwives lined up to take care of any eventuality.  She will have to be forthright and clear minded and not let these tinkerers of mortality, the doctors, try to bully her into treatment she does not want, just to suit the timetable of the maternity suite.

My wife has flown the coop and is now in Dublin boarding the Holyhead boat with a rolling pin in hand.  God help the doctors at Stepping Hill Hospital.   I am left with the young fellah, a mop and bucket and various dusters and told to make sure the house is perfect on her return.  That might not be until these twins are weaned so I have plenty of time.  The male’s station in life as with all things historic is a lonely one, but I suppose I have the pub and my blog and all the interesting things that both these channels deliver, but I must get on, the mop is doing a lonely dance in the bucket of hot water I prepared earlier.