The Manball: Part 1

So a few months ago (like about 18 months ago) I noticed a knot in my groin area, to the right of my 'lady butt,' in the area where my body stops and my right leg begins.  I ignored it, thinking it was a swollen gland or something associated with what Newt Gingrich so fondly calls our "monthly infections."  It wasn't painful or bothersome until bikini season, when I discovered that what I thought of as a small lump, actually looked more like a good sized manball.

I went to my doctor and he felt that it wasn't a hernia, which was what many of my friends thought it was (once I realized it looked like a manball, I suddenly realized a fondness for showing off my big ball.)  My doctor thought it was a varicose vein.  Varicose veins are usually a lot smaller, but for whatever reason, he didn't feel like it was a hernia, but a varicose vein.  My midwife friend confirmed this and recommended that I get T.E.D.s, which are like super tight pantie hose shorts, to wear under my clothes.  That sounded hot, gross, tight and uncomfortable.  It gives me a stomach ache now just thinking about it, so I ignored her well meaning advice.  

In April of this year, I ran a 25 mile trail race with my friend who, as my husband puts it, "left me in the desert to die."  This is a sore losery way of saying that she ran considerably faster than me that day, which in my defense was an unseasonably hot and windy day.  Also in my defense, I began and ended the race with a very nasty head cold - or more accurately a Mancold, which if your a man and your reading this, then you know what I'm talking about.  The kind of cold that any man would call 911 for, if his wife or significant other didn't come running when he, lying on the couch, needed a tissue.  Anyway, post-race, instead of putting gas in my car and driving home, I threw up everything I'd eaten or drank for the past few hours, so I knew I was in trouble.  In the emergency room, feeling much better with the I.V. in my arm that they should have given me with my swag bag at the starting line, I noticed that my manball is extra manly - more than golf ball size, more like the size of a non-organic lemon.  The E.R. doctor wasn't too sure about it and the student E.R. doctor in training took one look at it and said, "Hernia."  

"Nope," I said with confidence, "its a varicose vein."  When she wasn't convinced, she brought in a surgeon to check it out and he said, with even greater confidence, "It's a hydrocele in the canal of nuck.  Named after the 17th century anatomist Antoine Nuck, who discovered the phenomenon.  It usually happens in men, but very rarely, occurs also in women."

We were all very impressed with his seemingly informed diagnosis, and he told me to call him in a matter of months to take care of it.