Okay, someone asked me for another “insurance” story from where I used to work and I remembered this one. The following is what I remember from a doctor's report in regards to an accident. I will warn you now...for anyone who is squeamish (especially about testicles) don't read this. It is a completely true story but I will not use any names, so don't bother asking.

At one point, an E.R. Doctor was summoned by a nurse. It seems she had a patient who claimed he had “male problems” and would not let her examine him. The doctor went to see the patient and noticed he was wearing a robe and very loose fitting pajama bottoms. When asked to undress, the man did so and was wearing a large dirty rag around his genitals. The doctor removed this to find that the man's scrotum was so infected it had swollen to the size of a small cantaloupe.

The doctor asked him how it happened. This is where it gets interesting. It seems the man was a night watchman at a machine shop. He frequently got bored and to relieve his boredom he would masturbate. One day, he was very happy to find a machine that would help him do so.

The machine had a wide canvas belt that circulated between two huge metal rollers. When switched on, the belt was warm to the touch, constantly moving, and it vibrated. This was all the invitation the guard needed. He started regularly masturbating by going back into the shop, turning on the machine, and putting his penis against the warm vibrating belt until he climaxed. He did this for a long time without ever being caught or without any problems.

But one day as he was approaching climax he lost his footing and slipped. His genitals got caught in between the belt and one of the huge rotating steel wheels. He was thrown up into the air and several feet away, and nearly knocked unconscious. When he looked down (after recovering a bit) he noticed a hole in his scrotum. He didn't feel any pain (frequently, with sudden trauma, endorphines and adrenaline can keep you from feeling it until after you've calmed down) so his first thought was something like “gee, I had better close up the hole in my balls.”

He looked quickly around for something to do this with. Of course since this was a machine shop and not a nurses office, there wasn't much. He decided to use the industrial stapler. He sealed the wound in his scrotum by using three one-inch high carbon steel staples. Next he used an old trick to stop the bleeding, slathering the wound in machine grease, before tying it up with a rag he found. Then he quickly went home, presumably to have a few beers and recover from this whole mess.

Of course there are a few obvious problems here. Yeah, the biggie is not going to the hospital right away but he probably didn't want to get in trouble. But only slightly less than that is the staples. High carbon steel is different than stainless steel. While you can have stainless steel implants in the body (people who have piercings know this) high carbon steel corrodes when exposed to things like salt and acids...which are in our blood. Thirdly, while grease will stop bleeding (and is good to use in an emergency when there's nothing else, but you should get a cropper bandage on it and clean off the grease A.S.A.P.) it also does not allow the wound to aerate or breathe, so it traps any bacteria and allows it to grow. Finally, who knows what was on that rag when the guy wrapped it around his balls.

The doctor had several challenging tasks. First he implemented an emergency I&D (incision and drainage – to get rid of all of the build up of pus before the guy got a blood infection, too.) Then he removed the staples. Because of the damage the force of the stapling machine caused the the damaged tissue it was safer to make incisions and cut them out rather than try to unbend them. Next, he had to debride the area. What this means is he cut out all of the torn pieces of flesh and tissue that were not likely to recover and may have necrotized and become gangrenous. It was during this stage he noticed that one of the man's testicles had been avulsed (medical terminology for “ripped the hell off of your body.”) It was anyones guess where that was. Maybe they had found it next morning in the shop... “Hey, Murray! You loose a ball?”

Then they closed the wound using sutures. Finally they gave the guy a sitz bath (like sitting in a tub of weak hydrogen peroxide for a long time) before starting him on a high dose of I.V. antibiotics. After a couple of days of observation, they sent him home with even more antibiotics to take.

You ready? There is actually a punch line to all of this. The doctor ended his report with the words: “I can only assume the patient has abandoned this method of self-gratification.”