This is a story about my balls. Not the typical story. You can get that from any number of highly satisfied co-eds and Swedish au pairs. This story is how Health Care Reform^TM is like my nut sack: big, hairy, and when you play with it you end up with a mess on your hands.

Now, I'm a man of a certain age, and, in the way of things that come to men of a certain age, I noticed a suspicious bulge in the groinal area. I'm no stranger to a bulge down there, let me tell you, but this was a bulge where it didn't belong. Since my health insurance is good I bundled myself off to that sadist posing as my general practitioner to sort out the problem. In response this highly trained medico told me to unbutton my pants and then produced a rubber glove and an index finger. He subsequently shoved said index finger up my scrotum and told me to bear down as if I was taking a crap. He repeated the routine on the other side and, with a kind of wizardly knowledge, like that of children's literature's favorite pederast Dumbledore, pronounced the diagnosis: double inguinal hernia. Essentially my guts had escaped their home. The doc's recommendation was surgery, laparoscopic, and the sooner the better. Although I wasn't feeling any constant pain and could probably survive several years without the procedure, if things suddenly went south it could be very bad and expensive indeed. So off he goes and a few minutes later in waddled the nurse and lo and behold I had an appointment with a surgeon.

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