Urologists Are Having The Worst Week Ever

If you're a medical student, there are lots of reasons that, when pondering which specialty to choose, you would land on urology. Maybe someone in your family has been affected by serious maladies of the male genitalia, and you want to help other men who unfortunately find themselves in the same position. Maybe you're a pragmatist, and you've considered that as the population continues to age and the market for erectile dysfunction treatments continues to grow, urology is a field that could be very lucrative for you (particularly since even as politicians wrangle over whether insurers should cover Seasonale or whatever, ain't no company gonna deny a claim for boner pills). Maybe that time you curiously image-searched "micropenis,"* the results did not sufficiently answer your questions, and you want access to a larger (as it were) sample size (as it were). Maybe you just like penises! I mean, they are interesting. Regardless of why they chose their profession way back when, this country's urologists may have had mixed feelings about seeing their occupation splashed (as it were) all over TV this week, because I have to be honest: neither of the portrayals I saw made it seem like very much fun.

First, there was Dr. Joel Gelman on the TLC special, The Man With The 132 lb. Scrotum. If you didn't watch it (which: why?), the subject is Wesley Warren Jr. In 2008, after waking up with a shooting pain in one of his testicles, he developed a truly astonishing case of scrotal lymphedema: the tissue started to fill with fluid and thicken...at a rate of three pounds a month. Over time, Warren developed a growth that essentially engulfed his genitals completely -- a graphic animation in the special showed a flap growing from the top of his pubic mound in addition to the ever-expanding scrotum -- and pretty much ruined his life in all the ways you'd expect and some you wouldn't (for instance, eating dinner found him sitting on the edge of his bed, resting his growth on the floor, covering it with a towel, and then placing his plate on it while he ate, as though it were a TV tray).  Because Warren is on Medicaid, he would only be covered for treatment that took place in Nevada, where he lives, and the specialist he saw there had told him that in order to remove the growth, Warren would have to be castrated. Warren was not wild about that idea, so after he appeared on an episode of the TLC series Strange Sex, he tried to raise money for out-of-state treatment online. Unfortunately, the internet soon turned against him, as the internet will, on the basis that he seemed in the episode to be refusing treatment because he was enjoying the weird, gross fame his disfigurement brought him -- and, frankly, it is kind of shady that the Dr. Oz show offered to pay for it if he gave the show his story exclusively and he turned them down because he wanted to play the field.

So that's the background on Warren, who finally meets Gelman in Irvine, California. At their first meeting, while Gelman admits that this is the worst case of scrotal lymphedema he's ever seen (...I hope so?), he says he can address the problem while leaving Warren's genitals intact. Warren (who may have some other stuff going on mentally and emotionally due to the isolation his affliction has caused) expresses concern that the surgical anesthesia alone could kill him -- apparently this is something another doctor told him -- and Gelman's like, sure, that's always a possibility, but maybe weigh the risk of that against the fact that your scrotum gained another ounce and a half while we've been having this conversation?

Once Warren agrees to the surgery, he's still kind of a handful (as it were) as a patient. He asks Gelman whether he could keep the growth so that he could try to auction off pieces of it in order to raise money for the surgery. Gelman's like, gross, and no. The desperate/disgusting query -- paired with a little consideration from the show's production, probably -- may be what make Gelman offer to waive his fee, though it's hard to say; in addition to the above-linked Daily News article from last summer (in which I assume Gelman is the unidentified "doctor from the University of California, Irvine"), Gelman is mentioned here as having offered to do Warren's surgery for free after Warren's appearance on The Howard Stern show, and that was in 2011; Warren's surgery was this spring, so the timeline as it's represented on the show is a little confusing.

But I digress: when Gelman brings several students by to see Warren before his operation, we watch them inspect Warren's whole deal, and when Warren argues with Gelman about whether his penis has been entirely absorbed, Gelman has the unfortunate job of telling him -- in front of girls! -- that what Warren has thought was the tip of his penis is actually an outgrowth of skin. Warren argues this point so strenuously that Gelman has to bring logic into it, pointing out how far away this opening (which, mercifully, we do not see) is from Warren's body, and ask him whether, before this calamity, Warren's penis was a foot long. Reader: it was not. I'm sure all of this was ultimately worth it for Gelman, both from a public health perspective in terms of educating viewers about the extraordinary misfortunes that can befall a human scrotum and also the publicity for himself as The Man Who Saved The Penis Of The Man With The 132 lb. Scrotum, but I bet once Warren was finally discharged (as it were) from the hospital, Gelman went home and had a few stiff (as it were) drinks and tried to put the whole ordeal behind him (as it were) (wait, that one doesn't work).

Then in the Modern Dads series premiere, we get poor Dr. Kansis. Modern Dad Stone Slade (jesus) is the group's Single Dad, raising six-year-old Danica (oooooooof) while apparently catting around the greater Austin area with whichever girls with low self-esteem are drawn to his greasy swinger vibe -- one of whom, if this episode is to be believed, is named Bambi. In a totally spontaneous not staged conversation at Pease Park -- "Stay At Home Dads Headquarters," according to the chyron -- Stone brags about his latest conquest, and the other dads suggest that if he doesn't plan to have any more children, maybe he should actually plan by getting a vasectomy. Excuse me, I meant to say "the snip-snip," as the dads all call it, because they are adults.

So totally for the sake of his health and future and not at the urging of producers, Stone visits Dr. Kansis to find out about the procedure. As Dr. Kansis describes what it entails -- and, admittedly, the terms "cut" and "singe" don't make it sound pleasant, but it's not like Stone will be conscious for it -- his straightforward explanation is intercut with footage of Danica, in the waiting room, gleefully cutting up some construction paper with scissors. YOU KNOW, JUST LIKE HOW WHAT THE DOCTOR'S GOING TO DO WITH STONE'S PEE-PEE. Dr. Kansis went to school for a really long (as it were) time in order to work in his chosen profession. This is extremely undignified treatment of a medical expert who agreed in good faith to participate in this nonsense. Worst of all, when Stone later reports to all his shithead buddies that he consulted with Dr. Kansis and decided against the procedure, he refers to him as "the vasectomy doctor." Meeting one didn't even make him learn the word "urologist." Stone is forty-one, by the way.

Let's be real: there isn't a medical specialty that won't make the people who practice it get really good and close to some truly repellent stuff. The human body is gross. Still, if this week's urologist-heavy programming steered a few med students away from urology and toward, I don't know, ENT, then the sickos who produced both these shows probably did them a mitzvah. If you're reading this and you're pretty far along in your urology studies, don't worry: it's never too late to pull out. As it were.

*I could tell you not to do this but you already did it before you got to the bottom of the post, didn't you.