Self Repair

A 40 year old patient was obviously uncomfortable, and had little to say as he opened his trousers to expose a bit of angry red and black-and-blue scrotal skin. A jagged zig-zag laceration, oozing pus and blood, extended down the left scrotum. Amid the matted hair, were some half-buried dark linear objects, the patient explained that several days earlier he had injured himself in the machine shop where he worked, and had closed the laceration himself with a heavy-duty stapling gun.

Before his release from the hospital, 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.