I Prayed For Years That No One Would Discover The Issue With My Private Parts. Now I'm Done Hiding.

The doctor held my penis in his right hand for my parents to see. I was 7 and lying on the examination table at my pediatrician’s office.

“If you come closer, you can see that one of the testicles is not in the scrotum,” Dr. R said.

My right testicle was the focus. It had made a home within my groin.

“In the womb, the testicles are not yet in the scrotum until the 32nd week,” the doctor said. “But occasionally a child is born with one or both testicles undescended.”

It was the early ’80s. Dr. R spoke like he and I were the stars of an after-school special designed to educate Americans on the life cycle of testicles.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to run away. I wanted to be anywhere but that office.

Before puberty, he explained, a testicle can sometimes ascend back into the groin spontaneously. Or it can end up there as a result of force. The word “force” immediately brought to mind a street hockey game from months earlier. One of the bigger kids, Paul, hit a slap shot that landed in my nuts.

I could kill Paul.

“Then,” the doctor warned, “if we cannot push the testicle down before it grows bigger during puberty, surgery will be necessary.”

His words sent waves of terror crashing along every shore of my body. Tears streamed down my face.

***

The name for this condition, when originating at birth, is cryptorchidism. It derives from the Greek words kryptos and orchis, meaning “hidden” and “testicle.” Data suggests that 2% to 8% of newborns experience it. Most of the time, the condition involves one undescended testicle in the inguinal canal, the little highway that runs from the abdomen to one’s private area.

When it occurs after birth, as the condition probably did with me, it’s described as an “ascending testicle”