Day 29
Location 6: Prague
Nov. 29, 2022
Story time. In January 2019, during a basketball game, I was kneed directly in my balls.
As you know, getting hit in the nuts hurts. It hurts really bad. Well, this hurt like 10 times worse than any pain I had felt before. I couldn't stand up. I couldn't speak. I crawled off the court. If it had been filmed, Jackass could've made an entire movie using only that clip.
After 10 minutes (which is not longer than normal), feeling had returned to my gonads. I played the last five minutes of the game, but after returning home, my nether region was still writhing in severe pain. Before retiring to bed, I ran a status check in the mirror and what is meant to be a grape was a clementine. A black and blue clementine, actually (sorry). "Hospital" was my immediate and only thought.
I have no photos from the injury. Instead, here's a video of my friend Kevin from a ski trip that conveys most of what I experienced. I will not be taking questions about this video at this time.
A nurse interrupted my two-hour emergency room nap with "we're going to do some blood work". That was confusing because the results from my ultrasound two hours earlier still hadn't been shared. (Yes, an ultrasound. Oh you thought they only did that on pregnant women? Nope. They do it on injured testicles as well. It was warm and gooey and PAINFUL.)
"The doctor will explain everything" was the nurse's reply to my silent look of bewilderment. As they're setting up to take blood, the prick of a doctor very quickly and without any preamble explains: "You have some internal bleeding in one of your cojones." This is where he should have paused. "We'll have to do surgery." This is where he really should have paused. "We'll open up your sack, take the injured one out, sew it up, and put it back".
While offering his third chunk of exposition, he gestured unnecessarily: he lifted his right hand, crossed his body so it was by his left shoulder, mimed plucking an apple from the branch of a tree, swung his arm all the way back to the right of his body, mimicked sewing the apple up, and then replaced it to it's spot on the branch.
This visual–combined with the nurse emptying the blood from my body at this very moment–was overwhelming and, in a full sweat that had arrived seconds earlier, I let them know "I'm gonna pass out". "What?" the doctor asked (what a fucking idiot he was). "I'm passing out". Then I passed out. When I came to, the doctor apologized "sorry, I should've said that slower". Yea, no shit.
Everything went great, and my family jewels were/are fine. No worse for wear, thankfully. My boss, Andie, was sympathetic to missing a few days due to emergency surgery, but she was also curious what the injury was. "It's uh...I uh...I'll tell you in person."
Anyway, all that is to say I watched Christian Pulisic score the winning goal in the USA v. Iran world cup game, but not without injuring himself on the play by getting a knee to his ballocks. Pulisic officially suffered a "pelvic contusion", but I recognized the pain in his eyes for what really happened.
I watched the game with Harlan, who I had met 21 days prior in Vienna. Today, I happened to walk by Harlan on the street. He recognized me, and subsequently invited me to join his friends to watch the USA vs. Iran world cup game in an American-owned bar (this was preferable to a few days earlier when I watched the USA v. England game at an Irish bar and had 200 people giving me the evil eye). Here's the bar celebrating the victory:
Here are some bonus photos that are unrelated to any mid-section injuries:
Play Along At Home:
In this article, Dylan makes 8 references to his groin. Can you name them all from memory?
Do you agree that the doctor in this article was an overall bad guy? Why or why not (please show your work)?
Please write 2-3 paragraphs on what USA could have done better in their world cup performance.