InDecember 1971 I was in the Navy and the time finally arrived for my discharge. At that time, and guess still true today you had a physical before being discharged. During the physical, you know when they grab your balls and tell you to cough, they discovered that I had a sist on one of my testicles. They told me that I should have surgery but had the option of having the Navy do it, or have it done at my expense after being discharged. Since the price was right to have the Navy do it, I had the surgery to remove the sist. I was retuning to South Jersey after being released and requested that the surgery be performed at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. The military is known for its hurry up and wait, but to my surprise this process went quickly. I had the exam in Boston, sent to Philly the next day, and the surgery on the following day.
It was an embarrassing moment that seemed to last forever - shaving off my pubic hair by one of the male nurses. There were no complications with the surgery but the horror begun when the doctors came in to examine me two days after the surgery. Now note that we didn't have private or semi-private hospital rooms, I was in a ward with about 30 other guys and when a doctor came to treat one of the patients it drew the interest of the others on the ward.
After removing the bandage around by balls, I found that they had inserted a safety pin. Thought that was very bazaar but when they went to remove it, the springing action of opening the safety pin was absorbed by my balls. I think I was launched 2 feet in the air when I felt that jolt of pain, and my language was worthy of a dishonorable discharge, but mercy prevailed and was honorable discharged. My treatment was to take warm baths for a few days after the surgery, no problem. Then as the pubic hair started to grown back, it was very itchy and found myself needing of a good scratch, but always at the wrong time when other people were present.
Being close to home my parents visited, and so did my sister and brother-in-law on different times. During my sisters visit, the man in the bed across from me also had a visitor. He was hard of hearing, and I think most who are hard of hearing speak loudly. We has telling his visitor (and the rest of the ward since he was so loud) about his testicles being the size of a grapefruit. He said theyinjected him witha 3-sided needle and it shrunk to the size of a pea. My sister recently became a Christian and I really struggled to keep from bursting out in laughter.
One sad story was an elderly man in for some type of surgery that he feared. At night he snuck out and slept in another bed in another ward on a different floor. The orderies were asking where he was in the morning. Obvisously they did find him, but we was in intensive care for 3 days. Happy to see him back.
As the time for Christmas came, alot of the staff at the hospital were going home on leave. They stopped performing routine surgeries so the bed count went down, and they put men who returned from Viet Nam with amputees in our ward. It was difficult not to stare at their wounds, but most seemed to have adjusted to the loss of the limbs. I never forget one guy boasting about the disability checks he would be receiving. His bodily damage was the loss of his thumb, index and middle fingers, and his eyes. They had to remove one of his eyeballs, and was blind in the other. His girl friend recent broke up with him. Tears came to my eyes as I felt so sorry for him, and took comfort in knowing he couldn't see the tears run down my face.
Please always honor those who served. There are a lot of soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afganistan with deep emotional problems to overcome. I sometimes think we should bring the draft back so that these soldiers only have to serve one tour.
Wayne

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