My little sister is an E.R. nurse, and she sent me this item (typed in by
me verbatim). The glossarial terms in [brackets] suggested by her.

From the "Unusual Case" column of _Aspects of Human Sexuality_, July 1991,
by William A Morton, Jr, MD. Reprinted without permission.

"Scrotum Self-Repair"

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 problems." The
patient, about 40, was pale, febrile [feverish], 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-zag laceration, oozing pus
and blood, extended down the left scrotum.

Amid the matted hair, edematous [swollen] 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 [removal of dead
skin] 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 [ripped or torn out] and was missing. The stump of the
spermatic cord was recovered at the inguinal canal, debrided, and the
vessels ligated [tied off] properly, though not much of a hematoma [pocket
of blood] 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.

--- end ---

My sister had two thoughts:

1) is this covered by Workmans' Comp?

2) in a machine shop somewhere, somebody is asking "Hey Joe, what's the dog
playing with over there?"

Gee, talk about blowing your wad...
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