This Is Gonna Hurt

Sit Down Before You Read About The Golfer Who Suffered A . . . Fractured Testicle

- Michael J. Young

I’VE BEEN A PHYSICIAN for three decades, and handling Friday-night call duty was always particularly stressful for me. Often it followed a busy week and involved trying to avoid problems over the ensuing 72 hours while covering my practice and my partners.’ If Friday night was bad, the weekend would almost certainly be difficult. Problems came in multiples—and tended to go from bad to worse.

One such weekend began on a beautiful Chicago summer night. As usual for a call night, I went to bed around 10 p.m., hoping to get a reasonably good night’s sleep. Often, that was difficult, not because of any specific call but because of the anticipation of the call. This particular weekend, my practice group was on emergency-room call, which meant that we were responsible for any “unassigned” patients, meaning those who presented to the ER without any previous patient-doctor relationship with a physician on staff. Many such patients had no insurance and limited if any previous medical care, and could therefore be the most challenging. There was no reference point for the treating physician, and the patients were often suspicious of us and of “the system.” Usually they were brought in by ambulance to the closest emergency room.

On this night, I was awakened around 11:30 p.m. for a consultation. I could predict a long night ahead of me, along with a stressful remaining weekend, within 10 seconds of hearing the reason for the interruption of my REM sleep: A 43-year-old man had suffered a fracture of the testicle.