I’ve blown off a few of you over the last week, I’d like to give an update about what I was doing in that time.

Last Saturday, 2 December, I awoke to an almighty pain in my groin. The pain was such that I could not bring myself to think straight for more than a few moments at a time, and so I decided to go to the hospital with what I suspected was ischemic priapism.

I found my roomiest pair of pants, arranged myself that my condition was minimally noticeable, and put on my baggiest sweater. I took the bus to the hospital; being early in the morning, I had the bus to myself, but proceeded to stand the entire way out of an inability to slide into a sitting position.

I went to the main entrance of the hospital, but was told to go to the emergency room two blocks away, on a different street— it was a cold, rainy, and rather painful walk, made worse by the bag I was holding strategically in front of me and which, like a sadistic Newton’s cradle, would periodically smack me square in the testicles. At the security line for the E.R., I had to wait for a male guard to prove that I didn’t have a pistol tucked into my belt.

In intake/triage, I filled out paperwork; I don’t actually recall this, I think it’s the first time I either passed out or blacked out from pain that day. In reviewing my paperwork, I saw that under chief complaint, I had started a long, loquacious retelling of the events of the day, only to cross that out and in a rough hand, write: “dick pain”.

My next memory was talking to the emergency physician on a gurney and being told that I would have to be transferred to the larger general/teaching hospital, because the present hospital had no urologist on call. During her examination, my pain level, heart rate, and blood pressure were all spiking dangerously high and I was given my first dose of morphine. It was a fairly substantial dose, but it did nothing for the pain.

After an hour or so I was picked up for transfer. We spent less than half an hour on the road, but it was easily one of the most painful experiences of my entire life. I either passed out or blacked out several times during the trip. I don’t recall arriving at the general hospital, I just remember being there at some point and talking to a new ER physician.

I was given a dose of fentanyl, which, again, did very little for the pain. I was given a penile nerve block, which is similar in function and procedure to a digital nerve block, but in my experience much less effective. Now on Fentanyl and strong local, I was given my first penile injection and aspiration.

It began with a large bore needle. I could feel the needle as a de-localized pressure on the outside of my penis; as the urologist worked it in, I could feel a dull, tearing pain as it penetrated the cavernous body. The pain, even under sedation and anesthetics, was eminence; I cannot recall the particulars of the procedure. At some point fluid was pumped in, which made it feel as though my penis was about to burst. At another point, the Urologist attempted to suck out some blood, but all that issued was a blackish red sludge of “dead blood”. The procedure was ultimately unsuccessful, and I was admitted to the hospital for the night.

My next memory was waking up on the ward to the sounds of a man crying out in pain. The man was next to me, he was my roommate, and he was howling. For privacy sake I’ll not go on about his specifics. I gathered he had a history of drug use, and the narcotics he’d been prescribed were insufficient to alleviate his pain.

This is a common problem with prolonged opioid use or abuse—effective doses become less effective over time. My roommate was not drug seeking; I don’t think any of the practitioners thought he was drug seeking. But an effective dose of strong pain relievers for him would be dangerously high for most people. In his own words, he felt “illiterate when talking to professional types.” This began a week-long relationship in which I would “translate” what the staff wanted to do with him and try to calm him down during outbursts.

In the next part I’ll talk about the first surgery and an accidental Prince Albert.