Nearly losing a testicle in Thailand

Nearly losing a testicle in Thailand wasn’t part of the plan.

I won’t top that title for a while.

I’m writing this post from my phone in a hospital in Phuket Thailand.

Two hours ago, I underwent my first surgery.

And it’s not a surgery you want to have to undergo in Thailand…

Deadline day

Today is the application deadline for YCombinator. YCombinator is an accelerator program for tech start-ups. I’m hoping Streakoid will get me into YCombinator.

The application is a big boy, but I had spent a few hours on it yesterday.

All I had left to do was a short one minute video. Which I attempted to do this morning. I tried to make the video a few times, but then when I was doing it I started to feel a dull pain in my abdomen and lower back.

I sat down in the bathroom. Pacing the room, hoping it would pass. It didn’t.

It went from a dull ache to an intense pain. I did not understand what was happening.

Google told me I was dying. I went off Google. For a bit I just lay on the bathroom floor hoping it would kill me.

Going to the pharmacy

But I mustered up the strength to go to the pharmacy to get painkillers.

I went at a snail’s pace on my moped over the speed bumps.

Making it through the door of the pharmacy I limped in and asked for painkillers trying not to look like a junkie. This pharmacy somehow didn’t have them but they told me the one down the road did.

Painkillers are things I never take, so I asked for strong ones pointing to my groin and back. I asked her was there a hospital nearby. She couldn’t think of any.

I struggled outside and set on a bench where I googled a hospital. There was a hospital seven minutes away.

The only problem being my moped had little to no fuel. But I couldn’t wait any longer so I had to risk it.

I popped a painkiller and went at 15pm an hour along the main road in Phuket. Trying not to throw up on my bike from the pain.

The hospital

I stumbled into the emergency room. I must have looked like a zombie because I skipped the line.

The pain was too much. Lying there moaning in agony.

I now have a much deeper respect for women. I cannot imagine what a pregnancy is like compared to some ball pain.

As I rushed to the hospital, I forgot my passport, which meant there was a circus performance figuring out who I was.

I got all the opiates to tackle the pain but none of them were working. I got brought to another hospital for an x-ray. Not being told where or why I was going because the English level didn’t go much beyond, “Water” or “Painkillers”.

About 20 people must have looked at my genitals today. After the x-ray they brought me in an ambulance to my original hospital, sirens blaring the whole time.

I still had no further information about what was happening to me. The doctor said he knew what it was but never told me what it was.

The only thing he told me was that if I had to get surgery, he would have to remove a testicle.

So I had persuaded myself that he’d been taking both of them. I’d become a lady boy.

Whether I was dying was still unclear.

Either way, it wasn’t looking good.

The results came back, and they told me I would have to go to surgery.

He explained that one of my testes was twisted and he might have to remove it if it had died. I asked if I’d still have one left and he looked confused.

Oh DeaR GOd.

But then someone clarified, and he said yes. If it hadn’t died, he would just fix it.

I then spent the next hour and a half getting fed painkillers. After giving me different painkillers, they found one that worked.

They then came in and asked for my insurance details. It was at this point that I remembered I had forgotten to buy travel insurance before I went.

I explained I’d have to pay in cash.

The scene from the hangover came into my mind where he says how cheap the surgery was, so I thought I’d be fine.

They then handed me an estimate for £3000 that they expected paid on the spot. Wiping out most of my savings.

I was going into my first surgery, about to lose half of my manhood and all of my money.

At 3pm they wheeled me across to the surgery where seven more people would see my groin.

The anesthesiologist reassured me he would look after me. While making intense eye contact.

I said just make sure I’m asleep. In a nervous joke. I’ve had no surgery before.

He replied in a Thai accent, “Yes, and I’ll make sure you will wake up.” The thought of not waking up hadn’t crossed my mind.

Now all I could think of was that this was the end.

Laughing at myself thinking how ridiculous the situation was.

Going to the operating room; he asked me to breathe into a mask. I can’t remember falling asleep.

Waking up with a massive scar on the old grocery bag.

I reached down and… I still had two.

The doctor said the operation went well.

Post Operation

I’ve spent the rest of the evening being monitored because of low blood pressure because I took enough painkillers to kill an elephant. They are keeping me in overnight.

As the YCombinator application is due, I thought there would be no better way to show that I am a resilient founder than by posting my intro video from the hospital

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EDGkBU0vMw

Im trying to maintain my streaks with Streakoid so I’m smashing out this post on my phone. This surgery has been a road bump in building Streakoid and a hit to my savings.

I wrote yesterday that Streakoid would either kill me or it would be successful. But I didn’t think it would come at me this quickly.

Check out Streakoid so I can afford to pay my hospital bill.