First Time at a Urologist

I’ve had many experiences with urologists over the years although almost all of them were in my middle age. But I did have a couple of encounters with urologists as a young man. Here’s the story of my first:

This happened when I was 26 years old, and it was when I had first became sexually active. The activity was with the woman who later became my wife. At that stage of my sex life, it felt like I couldn’t get enough. Yet I developed pain in my testicles. It was a dull pain, not overwhelming, but almost constant. After a few days of this, coupled with some paranoia about the tendency of young men to develop testicular cancer, I decided to get it checked out. I was living in a city that was new for me, and I had no primary care physician. I made a same day appointment with a primary care physician at a large, well-known clinic in the city where I was living.

I arrived at the clinic for my appointment and met with the doc. I told him what was going on and he immediately said that I needed an evaluation by a urologist. He called the urology office in the clinic and made another same day appointment for me. So I headed on up to the urology department.

The medical assistant at the urologist’s office was a man. He took me to the examining room, took my vitals, and told me to remain seated until the doctor came in. I remember that the examining room seemed extraordinarily well-equipped, at least to me at the time. It had a urinal in it! More on that in a moment. The examination table had some sort of trough in it with a drain in the bottom. I suppose that was to contain leaks. I’ve been to urologists many times in recent years, and their offices are different these days.

The doctor arrived a few minutes later. He was a forty-something guy. I explained my difficulty to him. He had me stand up and pull down my pants and underpants, so that he could examine me. He then had me pee in the urinal while he watched me. I don’t think that is done at urologists offices anymore, having been replaced by the urodynamic flow tests. He also captured some of the urine for analysis. The doc then told me to turn around and bend over the table. Through the rectum, he then vigorously massaged my prostate. This caused prostatic fluid to leak from my urethra, which he then captured on a microscope slide and looked at under a microscope. At that point, he told me to pull my pants back up and sit down.

The doc proceeded to tell me that there was no infection and that it appeared to be just an inflammation of the genitals, in particular the epididymis. He said that this likely resulted from back flow of fluids from the urinary track and that this would clear up on its own in a few days. He said that I should come back if it didn’t clear up. And, yes, I was fine a few days later.

Many years later, a different urologist used to stress to me how important it was to fully empty the bladder when urinating so as to avoid any possibility of back flow. In retrospect, in that incident with the inflamed epididymis, that’s probably what was happening to me. I’ve pretty much avoided that problem ever since.