Tag: recovery

Two-stage urethroplasty: stage 1, 5 days after surgery

My final night in the hospital was probably the best since surgery. I’d set alarms to wake me up to take morphine so that it wouldn’t wear off completely during the night, that seemed to be a success.

Just after breakfast the surgeon came round and removed the dressing on my penis. Apparently everything is looking good, you can see that the graft is looking pink and healthy through the gel dressing in the photos. So I’m to come back through in a week so that she can have another look and I can get rid of at least one of the catheters.

Actually getting discharged took most of the rest of the day. A nurse turned up with a load of discharge paperwork. I refused the catheter bags they were offering since I’ve already got a good stock of ones that I know I can get on with. Then a junior doctor came to discuss prescriptions for drugs to take home.

The admin staff on the ward were kind enough to arrange for transport from home to the hospital for next week’s visit, since I can’t drive or take public transport. Dealing with the part of our county council that handles that stuff is usually unpleasant.

So I finally got away from the ward and stopped at the pharmacy in the hospital to pick up my prescriptions. Except the junior doctor had forgotten to submit them (electronically). My husband went and spoke with him and fixed that. Next we discovered that he hadn’t remembered all of the drugs, but the pharmacist called him and sorted that out.

I still couldn’t pick up the last of the drugs because some delay in the system meant that the pharmacist couldn’t see that prescription, so we decided to pick them up on our way home.

The drive home was fairly comfortable, some pain on rough sections of road but nothing too bad. My cheek and jaw were starting to hurt again though.

For the next week I’m pretty much trapped at home and to keep activity to a minimum. I may have a go at working from home but I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to sit at a desk.

Photos from days 5 and 6 after first stage of two-stage urethroplasty

Penis with stitches and an open wound covering about a third of the underside.
The wound on my penis, on the fifth day after the first stage of my two-stage urethroplasty.
Penis with stitches and an open wound covering about a third of the underside.
The wound on my penis, on the fifth day after the first stage of my two-stage urethroplasty.
Healing wound inside the right cheek, tongue and teeth partially obscuring
The wound inside my mouth on the sixth day after the first stage of my two-stage urethroplasty

Two-stage urethroplasty: stage 1, 4 days after surgery

This time it was a pretty mixed night. It started very badly, with constant disruptions from my roommate. It seemed he kept tangling, kinking and pulling out his various tubes. So the nurses would arrive, turn on the lights and start speaking to him extremely loudly. He also had his CPAP machine, which was surprisingly quiet. Unfortunately it sounds like a vacuum cleaner if you pull off the mask and leave it running, which he kept doing.

The poor old soul’s on his last legs and a bit confused, so I can’t be too annoyed. On the other hand it would be nice if he wasn’t in a room with me.

Later in the night I managed to sleep fairly solidly, without disruptions or pain. Unfortunately by about 04:30 all the painkillers had left my body and it was time for the most painful erection yet. It really felt like something was going to burst. Fortunately the (male) nurse on duty was very quick to bring paracetamol and morphine.

So now that the fog has lifted the sun is shining into my room and this will hopefully be my last full day in the hospital (this time).

Two-stage urethroplasty: stage 1, 3 days after surgery

A much better night. I’d worked out that the morphine tablets last two or three hours. So I took one about half an hour before going to sleep. Before falling asleep I managed to get an erection, desperately trying to think about other things but without any effect.

During the night I asked for more morphine when I felt I needed it and actually got an OK night’s sleep.

The doctor at rounds said she’d remind the nurses to just leave the morphine tablets with me, so I don’t have to keep calling them during the night.

Washed and got dressed and then spent the rest of the morning working out how to defeat the stupid filtering on the hospital’s internet. As well as blocking websites they try to block anything apart from web browsing and it seems like their DNS is pretty broken too. For example today I suddenly got DNS errors for this site. Actually it seems like all .uk sites get DNS errors.

After lunch my husband came to visit and took me out for a bit of a spin in a wheelchair. Although sitting upright isn’t all that comfortable yet it was great to get a decent cup of coffee and go for a stroll/roll along the river. He also helped me wash my hair, which was sorely needed.

 

Two-stage urethroplasty: stage 1, 2 days after surgery

I started off the night dozing fitfully but eventually managed to get to sleep properly but interrupted by painful erections. At one point I called for a nurse, she came, ignored me, peered at my roommate and then left (I tried to call out but too hoarse). I pressed the button again and she eventually came back and started fiddling with my roommate’s catheter tubing. I said excuse me and she told me to wait until she was finished. Eventually she came over to my bed and I told her I was in quite severe pain. Of course I had to call and remind her again before she actually turned up with some morphine.

After breakfast and rounds I got up and had a wash, which made me feel a lot more human. The nurses changed my bedding so I wasn’t lying in my own bloodstains and shaved-off pubic hair any more. I got dressed in the hospital day clothes, that make you look like a convict.

I had a lot of trouble staying awake, so I dozed for a bit, having very weird half-awake dreams.

Lunch was isterband, which was OK but unfortunately slightly spicy and irritating to my cheek.

Dozed some more in the afternoon. Had some coffee but it wasn’t enough to keep me awake.

The evening was spent on Skype calls and Hangouts chats with family.

Two-stage urethroplasty: stage 1, 1 day after surgery

I had a fairly disturbed night, waking up a lot. After I got some morphine I finally managed to get off to sleep properly but was woken up by the searing pain of an erection at about five. Like last time, it’s nice to know things are still working but I could do without the pain.

Cornflakes with yoghurt and a cup of coffee for breakfast, without any serious pain from my cheek. It’s really amazing how quickly that heals.

At rounds I was told I could get up a little bit, but shouldn’t walk about too much. My night-time drug prescription was changed too, so I’d get a morphine tablet to take if I woke up during the night. The dressing was looking fine, no blood seeping through.

The cannula in my left elbow had come quite loose, the dressing hadn’t stuck very well in the first place and was hanging off. I asked three nurses to fix it but they all forgot. Eventually I managed to get a nurse who could do that and bring me a bowl so that I could brush my teeth.

I got up in the afternoon to change from the surgical gown into a nightshirt. Not much of an improvement but at least it doesn’t expose my arse to all and sundry. I made it through to the bathroom in the evening to clean my teeth. Getting in and out of bed is pretty painful but standing was OK.

During the day the confused elderly guy in the next bed was discharged and a new old man appeared with his wife. At least they said hello and introduced themselves.

Two-stage urethroplasty: stage 1, surgery day

I barely slept due to a combination of nerves and my roommate repeatedly switching his light on and off (he’s elderly and apparently very senile). I was first on the surgery list, so the nurses popped up around 05:30 to remind me to shower and change into the fetching totally-open-up-the-back surgery gown.

Right on time, at 08:30, I was wheeled down but there was a queue in the pre-op area and it was 08:45 before someone came to fetch me and after 9 before I was taken into the operating theatre. I’m pretty familiar with the whole procedure, the staff were very pleasant and chatty, and before long I was out.

As usual my memories from recovery are a bit confused. I’d asked them to call my husband when I got out of surgery and I remember reminding them while I was still pretty out of it, but they never called him. Fortunately he’d guessed about the right time anyway, so he was waiting for me at the ward when I was wheeled up there a couple of hours later.

Compared to my previous urethroplasty I’d say I had a lot more pain on waking up this time. In recovery I needed some extra paracetamol for the aching in my groin and then as the local anaesthetic in my cheek wore off I needed a couple of doses of morphine.

Up at the ward the groin pain was OK, a constant dull ache, but I needed some local anaesthetic gel for my cheek to be able to eat the horrendously dry fish we got for dinner. As always I was hungry rather than nauseous after the general anaesthetic.

The surgeon came to see me in the afternoon and she seemed very happy with how things had gone. She said there were 5 cm of urethra that was completely scarred and unsalvageable but the rest looked healthy. That was a relief, I was worried they’d discover more scarring. The pain in my cheek was explained by them having to take a roughly 5 by 3 cm chunk of tissue to make the graft, much more than last time.

I’m not allowed to sit up fully today and I’m to stay in bed for five days altogether. I was glad to hear that I am allowed to get up to use the toilet, so I won’t have to poop in a bedpan. Small mercies! They left in my suprapubic catheter and I’ve (apparently) got a urethral catheter through the healthy urethra near the tip of my penis, looping out over the dressing covering the graft and then back in at the base of my penis and into the bladder.

So now I’m just relaxing in bed and trying to find ways to keep myself amused. It’s just as well I planned ahead and brought my laptop. I took a photo of the dressing, but it’s not especially interesting.

In my online medical records I can see the surgeon’s full narrative of the surgery, so here it is (translated from Swedish):

Patient in flat position, surgery area washed and dried sterile. Begin to apply gel in the meatus, insert a 14 Ch catheter circa 5 cm then dead stop. Incision in the skin over the urethra. Subsequently with scissors through the subcutaneous tissue. Place urethroplasty hooks. Open the urethra along the midline, where it is significantly fibrotic from the incision and circa 5 cm proximally, then opens up nicely. Decide that I must excise the whole fibrotic area. Measure a strip 5 cm long and barely 3 cm wide. Subsequently the graft is taken from the right hand side of the cheek, draw ut 5 x 3 cm after I marked out the opening for Stensen’s duct. Inject local anaesthetic under the tissue. I separate the graft when I reach 5 cm length. Control of haemostasis with diathermy. Place a compress with xylocaine-adrenaline in the cheek. Trim the transplant. Mesh [the graft]. Place the graft in position and fasten with a few stitches to the edges and also 3 rows of sutures to hold the graft down onto the corpora. Then stitch the skin edges to the graft and urethra, which I spatulated circa 6 mm at both proximal and distal ends. Lubricate the urethra. Lay a mepitel compress over the graft and a 14 Ch catheter in place. The penis is laid up towards the belly and pressure bandaged. Finally checking the wound in the cheek, finish with two single stitches since I don’t want to burn right by the opening of Stensen’s duct.

Follow-up appointment

I finally had my follow-up appointment today. I mostly wanted to ask about the curvature, twist and pain of my erection and the continuing strange sensation in parts of my foreskin, where some patches are almost numb and others that feel like they’re sunburnt).

The first step, as usual, was uroflowmetry. I peed into the machine and returned to the waiting room. Then the nurse came back for me and took me to an examination room where she measured the remaining urine in my bladder with the ultrasound device. There were 90 ml remaining, although some of that might have been new as I’d had a lot to drink in the morning to make sure I could pee on demand.

After a while a junior doctor appeared, yet another one I’d never seen before. He told me that although the shape of the curve now looked normal the maximum flow rate was too low and they’d do a cystoscopy to check out what the problem was.

I wasn’t all that keen on the idea, knowing that cystoscopies have a relatively high chance of causing further damage. I was happier once I heard that one of the surgeons who’d performed my urethroplasty would be there.

After all the usual preparation, including two large doses of local anaesthetic gel squirted up my urethra, the endoscope went in.

The good news is that the graft is looking nicely pink and healthy. The bad news is that there’s a stricture where the graft joins the original urethra on the side towards the bladder. That has partially blocked my urethra at that point, although not enough to be very noticeable. You could just about see past the stricture to normal urethra on the other side, so it wasn’t very long at all, just a millimetre or two.

The doctors discussed with each other, with the nurse and me occasionally reminding them that I was there, and decided that I should try dilating the stricture for six months or so to see if it helps. That’s another thing I wasn’t keen on, knowing that dilation has an extremely poor success rate and can actually make things worse.

The nurse disappeared off to get a selection of different sizes of catheters to work out what size I should start with. I endured the awkward chit-chat and then silence with the senior doctor.

In the end only a number 8 catheter would pass through, after several attempts by both the nurse and the surgeon. It seems that there’s a sort of little pocket formed by the graft that kept catching the catheters and there’s no way I’d be able to get any useful size up there myself. They were hoping to start with at least a 12 and work up to a 16.

So now I’m waiting for an appointment for another urethrotomy.

This isn’t entirely surprising. Small, thin strictures of this kind are apparently common after urethroplasty. All the research I’ve seen suggests that the chance of recurrence after urethrotomy is low, I’m just kind of disappointed that the whole thing isn’t over yet.

One option I’m sort of considering is to hold off on the urethrotomy and see if the stricture gets any worse. I can live with it in its current state. I’ll have to read up on things a bit more and think about it.

And finally, the things I originally wanted to ask about (wonky erections and odd sensation) are all quite normal and related to scar tissue and regrowing nerves. I need to be patient. Also, erections are apparently good for stretching the scar tissue.

Waiting for follow-up appointment

I never got a reply from the surgeon to my message about my wound reopening. It closed up again within a day or two and now the wound is looking pretty good, it’s not even very visible any more. The odd sensations from regrowing nerves now seem to mostly be in my foreskin instead of along the wound.

I did get a letter with a date for my follow-up appointment. Seems like they’d forgotten about it until I reminded them, again. With it being peak summer holiday season it was apparently impossible to give me an appointment in the period they originally told me (4-6 weeks after the removal of the catheter) and I’m going on vacation myself so the appointment’s not until the end of August.

Updates here will be sparse until the appointment, unless something interesting happens. I’m really hoping that nothing interesting happens.

Wound trouble

I got a bit of a fright on Friday night when the wound on my penis reopened. I was peeing before going to bed and I felt something wet on the underside of my penis. I thought it was maybe just sweat but when I moved my hand there was blood on it. My shout of surprise brought my husband to the bathroom and we had a look.

It turned that about 1 mm of the wound at the end furthest from the scrotum had opened up and was bleeding slightly. Apparently this can happen with wounds as the collagen that forms the original scar is replaced, it’s called dehiscence.

We washed the wound and stuck a dressing on it and by Saturday morning it was looking much better. Now it looks the same as it did before it reopened. We’ve been using steri-strips to try to reduce tension on that part of the scar.

I’m still waiting for my follow-up appointment, so I sent a message to the surgeon telling him about the reopening and reminding him about my follow-up. I’m hoping I’ll get an appointment before I go on vacation later in the month.

Added some new photos

I’ve added some photos showing the current state of my penis. These are, of course, not suitable for work.

There’s still quite a curve when it’s erect and I can feel it stretching inside but it’s not painful. Sensation along the scar is still odd, occasionally stabbing pains and it’s quite unpleasant if anything rubs on it. The scar is actually much less red than the camera’s flash makes it look.

The lumpy part of the scar in my mouth has gone, now all I can feel is a line along the inside of my cheek.

48 days after surgery photos

Six weeks after surgery

I got an email today from someone who’d found this blog and reminded me that I hadn’t updated in a little while (I tried to reply to him but there seemed to be a problem with the email address).

Things are going quite well. The wound is becoming less visible and also less sensitive, it’s now mostly just feeling kind of odd when touched rather than slightly painful as it was before. I get occasional random twinges of pain, especially in the part of the wound on my scrotum but I’m assuming this is all just part of the nerves regrowing.

Peeing still stings a bit sometimes but that seems to be getting better too. I’ve also tried some gentle sexual activity and that hasn’t caused any problems. The internal scarring/swelling is still causing quite a severe bend to my penis when it’s erect and that’s something I’ll talk to the doctor about at my follow-up appointment in a few weeks.

When I get a chance I’ll take some more pictures and upload them. I’m also planning a post with some of the useful studies and papers I found.

Post-catheter update

I’ve now had a couple of days without the catheter and it’s going well. I get a good flow with I’m peeing, no dribbling afterwards and only a little bit of stinging pain now. In fact the pain is less than before the surgery.

There hasn’t been any bleeding since Thursday and the bladder spasms at the end of urination are now pretty much gone. The suprapubic catheter wound has closed up and seems to be healing well, although it’s still a little sensitive to pressure.

Cystourethrogram

I was kind of excited and nervous all day, sort of more nervous that before the urethroplasty, because it was the day I’d find out whether I’d be rid of the suprapubic catheter.

After lunch I took the bus up to the hospital and after a short wait it was time to change into one of the lovely hospital gowns and go into the fluoroscopy room. This time we could skip all the messing around trying to squirt contrast up my urethra and just run it in through the suprapubic catheter. It took over an hour anyway but I managed to get over the weirdness of peeing on demand while lying under an x-ray machine and they got some good pictures.

In the first picture you can clearly see the stricture before the urethroplasty (but after the urethrotomy). “Mynning” is the tip of my penis and “kateterspets” is the end of the catheter they were using to put contrast in. All the stuff around the tip is the hand of the nurse who was holding everything in position.

The next two are the new pictures after surgery. You can see that my urethra is now a decent width all the way along. There’s a slight narrowing marked around where the graft is but it’s possible that was just a blood clot (a big lump did come out while I was peeing).

After x-ray it was time to go down to urology and see what the surgeon thought. He seemed very happy and said they’d remove the catheter. He was also asking about how the graft donor site in my cheek was doing. It seems he was used to putting in stitches but had left it this time on advice from his visiting colleague. From what I’ve read having stitches is much worse from a patient’s perspective and my cheek has healed quickly and well. I asked him when I could start having sex again and he said I could as soon as I felt ready. When I pressed him a bit he said maybe waiting another couple of weeks would be a good idea.

The nurse came to remove the catheter. After she cut the stitches holding it in place I felt a tug and thought it was out. Then there was another tug. Then a long pulling sensation. It seemed that there was roughly 20 cm of catheter coiled up in my bladder!

It was so nice to be able to walk home without the catheter irritating my bladder and to sleep without worrying about tangling catheter tubing. I really enjoyed my shower this morning.

Peeing is also a joy, with a good strong flow. There’s still a little bit of stinging and some bleeding afterwards but that should pass.

Fourth week after operation

The suprapubic catheter they put in (held in by stitches) before I was discharged from the hospital is a bit different from the others I’ve had. It has two separate parts: the narrow catheter tube itself (clear silicone) and the adapter to connect it to a drainage bag.

Unfortunately the two parts can be separated quite easily and this occasionally happens if the catheter tubing slips through the adhesive catheter holders. On Tuesday morning it pulled off and I didn’t notice until the urine had soaked through my t-shirt. This time I’ve arranged it so that one catheter holder is holding the adapter and the catheter tube has plenty of slack.

I got an appointment for the cystourethrogram for Wednesday the 10th. After that the doctors will be able to decide whether my urethra has healed and isn’t leaking. If everything is OK the suprapubic catheter will come out and I’ll be back to peeing normally.

I also got an appointment with a nurse on Monday the 8th. There was nothing to say what the appointment was for so I contacted the urology department. It turns out that they’d messed up the scheduling and the nurse was going to remove the suprapubic catheter before the x-ray appointment. They fixed it so that I’d just go up to urology straight after the cystourethrogram.

I’d thought the worst of the night-time erection pain was over, but in the early hours of Thursday I woke up with one and was just dozing off again when I felt three sharp pains inside my penis, along with a strange snapping sensation. I’m assuming it was some of the remaining stitches that had partially dissolved and were snapped by the tension. Since that I don’t get any pain with erections, just a sensation of tightness along the urethra.

Things are starting to look more normal, the scar is fading nicely with just one reddish patch. I can still feel inflammation along the whole repaired stretch of urethra but I had the same after the urethrotomy and that seems to take a couple of months to go away.

Third week after surgery photos

Third week after operation

The bladder spasms came back with a vengeance on Tuesday, with quite a bit of leakage through the urethra. Even worse on Wednesday. It felt like my bladder was full when I woke up and there was very little in the night bag. The leakage also caused some pain and bleeding in my urethra.

My husband somewhat forcefully arranged an appointment for me at the urology clinic (it’s sometimes very useful being married to a doctor). I was seen within ten minutes of arriving at the hospital and the nurse flushed out the catheter and spoke to a doctor to get me a prescription for tolterodine for the spasms.

The flushing and drugs seemed to work. I had a few spasms later in the week but they were much milder and didn’t cause leakage.

My penis was looking less swollen and the bruising was almost gone. With an erection there’s a noticeable downward curve that it didn’t have before. I’m hoping that will go away once all the stitches have dissolved and the internal swelling has gone. The external stitches had all come out by the end of the week. The scar on my cheek is still irregular and noticeable but not giving me any trouble. Click here for photos.

Second week after operation

The pain of night-time erections gradually got better during the week, taking some slow-release ibuprofen along with paracetamol before going to bed helped.

The bladder spasms were better once I was rid of the urethral catheter. I started working from home although I was very tired due to poor sleep and avoiding caffeine. I slowly started drinking coffee again as the week went on.

When I was pooping I kept getting some very odd sensations in my prostate, maybe because it was still sensitive from the catheter. On one occasion I had what I’m pretty sure was a prostate orgasm, which was very intense.

I started off going to the nurse at my GP surgery to get the suprapubic catheter dressings changed every few days. I usually got wet when I showered but the wound didn’t seem to be seeping at all. The nurse changed my leg bag on Monday and I got supplies so that I could do that and replace the suprapubic catheter dressings myself.

For a couple of days I was getting pretty severe pain on the left side of my jaw and apparently grinding my teeth during the night. That went away by itself, probably just a side-effect of my mouth being wedged open during the surgery. Otherwise the wound in my cheek was healing up pretty nicely, still a little bit irregular and sensitive but not causing any problems.

Operation + 6 days (Monday)

After a very disturbed night due to erections I got up and pooped again. This time it was preceded by really bad bladder spasms and a few centilitres of urine squeezed past the catheter.

Took the bus up to the hospital in time for morning rounds. A more senior urologist was doing rounds and he’d been informed about the trouble with the suprapubic catheter. I had to wait for someone to put in a new one, which would be done on the ward with local anaesthetic.

The treatment room in the urology ward seems to mostly be used as a storeroom, with nurses coming and going all the time to collect supplies and pick up labels from the printer. An operating light had a sign saying that it was faulty and had been reported in March.

A young doctor and a male nurse were going to be replacing the suprapubic catheter. After a bit of a clean the nurse started squirting saline into my bladder, stopping when it got uncomfortable. At the same time the doctor was injecting the local anaesthetic, with a fearsomely long needle. The first batch wasn’t quite enough and I was glad that he believed me when I told him I usually need more.

Once the anaesthetic had taken effect the doctor took the huge thick needle (it looked like a skewer) and started poking it through my belly, causing all sorts of odd sensations. That didn’t work, so he pulled it out and tried again. The second attempt failed, liquid would come out of the needle but when he inserted the catheter nothing came out through it.

The third attempt was also unsuccessful so the doctor scuttled off to consult a more senior colleague. It seems the advice was for more water, to make my bladder easier to find. The fourth and fifth attempts were incredibly uncomfortable as I felt like I desperately needed to pee. I ended up panting and feeling panicky. As they still hadn’t succeeded they let the saline out while the doctor went to fetch his colleague.

The senior doctor seemed to be in a charming mood and he fairly quickly and efficiently got the catheter in and then spent a while stitching it firmly to my belly.

I got dressed and went along to the day room for lunch, feeling a bit shaky. Then I had to hang around all afternoon waiting to be discharged. A nurse came to remove the urethral catheter and left me a supply of night bags but no drugs nor any discharge information.

Eventually another nurse gave me my drugs to take home. My husband insisted that I needed to see a doctor before I left and finally the young one who’d had all the trouble with the suprapubic catheter turned up and discharged me.

Operation + 5 days (Sunday)

Had a less horrible night, still woken by painful erections but managed to at least get a few solid hours of sleep.

The catheter night bag was really full and difficult to empty. When I cut the corner off a jet of urine sprayed the area around the toilet, so I had to wipe it up and mop the bathroom.

I managed to poop for the first time in four days and without any spasms. I’d avoided caffeine during the day, so maybe that helped.

Operation + 4 days (Saturday)

I had a horrible night with a persistent semi-erection from about 04:00, usually becoming fully erect with about 15 minutes of me dozing off.

The dressing on my penis was in need of replacement but we didn’t have the supplies to do it. While everything is more visible I could see that my penis is looking quite twisted but that was apparently due to internal bleeding and swelling and will resolve itself. Click here for photos.

I risked some coffee at lunch but then had some horrible bladder spasms in the afternoon. I’m not sure if the two things are related.

Operation + 3 days (Friday)

I slept fairly well, still with the occasional erections waking me.

Still no output from the suprapubic catheter so I headed up to the urology ward around 08:30. They seemed to be expecting me, so I sat at my bed and waited for rounds.

The doctor suggested trying flushing out the suprapubic catheter again. So a nurse came round to do that. As she removed the dressing from the suprapubic catheter the whole thing came along with it. I could see quite clearly that the balloon had burst and the catheter had obviously pulled out of my bladder.

It looked a lot like when the nurse had used forceps to remove the old catheter bag that had over-pressurised the balloon and burst it.

After a quick consultation with the doctor and a more senior nurse it was decided that I’d manage over the weekend with just the one catheter and go back in for discharge on Monday as planned.

I had a comfortable afternoon at home watching TV. The upside of not having the suprapubic catheter is that I didn’t have any of the belly discomfort I’d had since the operation.

The non-stick dressing on my penis and scrotum had started to come away from the stitches so I could see how far down onto my scrotum the wound went. That explained why there was so much tenderness and bruising down there. Click here for photos.

Sleeping was easier with only one tube to wrangle.