Spoiler alert post most likely contains TMI but considering the diagnosis and symptoms that led to said diagnosis it can't really be helped.


A couple of weeks ago I woke up to the wonderful surprise of my normally small peach/large nectarine sized ball sack being inflamed to the size of a medium coconut with much pain in the surrounding lower abdominal and groin areas to go with it.

Trip to the doctor led to an initial diagnosis of a possible acute hernia and an urgent suggestion to head to the emergency room of a trusted hospital ASAP for treatment. That led to about three hours being spent in said emergency room with various people treating those parts of my anatomy like a pinata and eventually an ultrasound being done on me. Official diagnosis was inguinal hernia and epididymitis.

Ten days of antibiotics have returned the scrotum to its normal size but I am still dealing with a hernia that is pain free approximately 40% of the time, shooting out minor and tolerable pain another 40% of the time and hurts like hell the other 20% of the time.

The doctors at the emergency room wanted to do the old wait and see act before looking into possible surgery. I stupidly blew off the follow up appointment because the first week afterwards was relatively pain free however the second week hasn't been. I have a three thousand dollar deductible on my health insurance which might as well be thirty thousand considering my financial state right now. I simply can not afford to make trip after trip to the doctor while they run various tests on me only to say we don't want to do anything now let's keep running tests for a couple of months and see how it goes knowing that those tests will result in a $3001 medical bill when all is said and done.

Anyone have any experience with this matter?