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- The following is an article reprinted from the July 1991
- issue of the medicaljournal "MEDICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN SEXUALITY"
-
- SCROTUM SELF-REPAIR
-
- by William A. Morton, Jr, MD
- ----------------------------
-
- One morning I was called to the emergency room by the head ER nurse.
- She directed me to a patient who had refused to describe his problem other
- than to say that he "needed a doctor who took care of men's troubles." The
- patient, who was about 40, was pale, febrile, and obviously uncomfortable,
- and had little to say as he gingerly opened his trousers to expose a bit of
- angry red and black-and-blue scrotal skin.
-
- After I asked the nurse to leave us, the patient permitted me to
- remove his trousers, shorts, and two or three yards of foul-smelling stained
- gauze wrapped about his scrotum, which was swollen to twice the size of a
- grapefruit and extremely tender. A jagged zig-zig laceration, oozing pus and
- blood, extended down the left scrotum.
-
- Amid the matted hair, edematous skin, and various exudates, I saw
- some half-buried dark linear objects and asked the patient what they were.
- Several days earlier, he replied, he had injured himself in the machine shop
- where he worked, and had closed the laceration himself with a heavy-duty
- stapling gun. The dark objects were one-inch staples of the type used in
- putting up wallboard.
-
- We x-rayed the patient's scrotum to locate the staples; admitted him
- to the hospital; and gave him tetanus antitoxin, broad-spectrum antibacterial
- therapy, and hexachlorophene sitz baths prior to surgery the next morning.
- The procedure consisted of exploration and debridement of the left side of
- the scrotal pouch. Eight rusty staples were retrieved, and the skin edges
- were trimmed and freshened. The left testis had been avulsed and was missing.
- The stump of the spermatic cord was recovered at the inguinal canal,
- debrided, and the vessels ligated proberly, though not much of a hematoma was
- present. Through-and-through Penrose drains were sutured loosely in site, and
- the skin was loosely closed.
-
- Convalescence was uneventful, and before his release from the
- hospital less than a week later, the patient confided the rest of his story
- to me. An unmarried loner, he usually didn't leave the machine shop at
- lunchtime with his co-workers. Finding himself alone, he had begun the
- regular practice of masturbating by holding his penis against the canvas
- drive-belt of a large floor-based piece of running machinery. One day, as he
- approached orgasm, he lost his concentration and leaned too close to the
- belt. When his scrotum suddenly became caught between the pulley-wheel and
- the drive-belt, he was thrown into the air and landed a few feet away.
- Unaware that he had lost his left testis, and perhaps too stunned to feel
- much pain, he stapled the wound closed and resumed work. I can only assume he
- abandoned this method of self-gratification.
-
- *** EOF
-