MORE MEDICAL EXPOSITION

In just a few more hours I'm heading to a surgery center for yet another medical procedure. My third time blasting kidney stones. (I've asked the doctor if he plans on wearing his glasses this time...)

Given that this is the third time in as many years lying semi-exposed on a table with a bunch of people in the room, I've been thinking about my medical history a lot. My lower left quadrant of my abdomen has received considerable attention over the years, and has left me with a complete lack of modesty when it comes to being naked or partially exposed with other people.

(Yes, I posed for artists in college. I spent a good chunk of time naked with my friends as well. However, post-college life involved quite a bit less nakedness as my newer friends were all a lot more circumspect about sex and nudity. Not all of them, but the majority.)

In the last twenty years I've had numerous medical procedures and examinations which are intimate in nature, and over time I've gotten to the point of "just get it done" with any sort of poking, prodding, handling or other exposure of my penis and nuts. My groin seems to be ground zero for my issues, which - given my college and high school obsessions with sex - is ironic and somewhat appropriate.

I've recounted some of those things here in previous entries, but in short I have had the following:

 One inguinal hernia operation, which left me with considerable internal scar tissue, a patch of numbness, and a seriously bad razor burn on my left groin where the technician took off a few layers of skin in addition to my pubic hair. The diagnosis of the hernia required two differerent doctors giving me the turn your head and cough treatment on several occasions plus two separate ultrasounds of my left crotch.

The scar, image in a mirror

(The location and type of hernia was problematic and not easy to diagnose. It was a failure of the inguinal ring rather than a tear in a muscle, despite what might be suggested in the mirror image of the car photo above. The surgery was itself a fairly complicated affair from what the doctor later told me, requiring him to cut and tie muscle, and dig down into the testicle from the incision point to collect and tie off other tissue.)

A complication to that surgery which landed me in the ER naked from the waist down and exposed to just about any medical personnel who wandered in. At one point I was asked if a small group of medical students could come in, which is probably the point where my even-then low level of modesty broke completely and I stopped caring about people seeing me naked.

Check.

Since then I have had two uretal stents put in and removed - a process which requires the doctor to go in through the penis to implant, and weeks later remove, a tube designed to deal with scar tissue or constrictions in the path that runs from the kidney to the bladder. Since they go through the dick, you're obviously completely exposed and being handled.

(You are put into a twilight sleep for the implantation, which can be rough. The removal is in the doctor's office, where you lie back on a exam table, legs draped over the end of the table and the doctor sits with your balls at chest level. The first time I had this done the doctor tried using a drape of paper with a hole torn and my dick protruding. Kind of absurd and I told him so. He wadded up the paper and went about the task of removing the stent, which requires a metal tube up through the urethra - the water and jizz carrying exit through the penis. It took him some time to latch onto the end of the stent, which meant I was in that position for a good ten minutes.)

So, in addition to the hernia exposure I then had two surgical procedures to put the stents in, and two office procedures to have them removed.

Check.

I have a varicocele, which you can think of as a varicose vein in your testicle. Blood stops flowing properly and that vein backs up, getting enlarged and irritated. Most guys develop them and never have a problem. Naturally mine elected to cause me pain - both a dull ache and a pinch that moves as the vein shunts around.

Several doctor appointments to get felt up before my urologist decided to have tests done.

Three more testicular ultrasounds to diagnose - some of which I've recounted here.

Three technicians, at separate times of course, running the ultrasound device up and around my nuts, asking me to bear down as they took pictures.

Check.

I have an amazingly patient and caring physical therapist who - when the pain becomes too uncomfortable - helps me with intimate treatments for the varicocele. Way above and beyond, he's

done more to treat the pain than my urologist.

Obviously he deals with my groin in intimate ways and has seen me bone up on several occasions.

Check.

And lets not forget the normal pattern of medical checks and physicals for a man in his late fifties. Fingers and colon scans up the ass, the annual physical, the semi-annual scoping of the bladder using the penis as the access route, etc.

All of which leaves me with the aforementioned "just get it done" attitude.

So today I head to the surgery center, where I will be asked to change into a gown, lie on my back and go gently to sleep as people hang out in the operating room while the machines do their work of pummeling my kidney.

I have no idea if I'll be exposed. No idea if the doctor will, at some point, decide to put a stent in. No idea if they will bundle me up and avoid exposure at all costs or, if once I'm out, they'll remove the drape for easier access.

It's their level of comfort, not mine.

Relax, this won't hurt a bit...