This post continues the story from:
I had hoped that my bum crack might get better by itself, but the pain fluctuated and remained very unpleasant before bed for 2 more nights. So this morning, after urinating and then quickly showering to soothe the pain a little, I went to see a private GP (family doctor, for any Americans reading this). On the journey, the pain temporarily went away completely, which was nice. I did mention to the GP that I felt an urge to pee when I touched the sensitive parts of my bum crack, but I don’t know if he paid any attention to that.
He took my medical history, had me pull down my pants and lie on the bed, examined my bum crack - and told me that my skin was about to peel off down there, it was that bad! Wow, OK - certainly much worse than when I took the video then!
After I saw the GP, I started to feel momentary (< 1 second) pains in my right testicle, and these are now rapidly increasing in frequency, though not in duration. 😳 (He didn’t touch my testicles, so I’m not saying this has anything to do with having visited a doctor, I must stress.)
I suppose this could be down to tight clothes, but I’ve gone commando now that I’m back home (due to some advice I read online for a different but related condition, and my sense from my experience that my underwear has been aggravating things) and I don’t think the joggers I’m wearing are particularly tight - but perhaps they were and I just wasn’t paying attention. I feel pretty comfortable otherwise.
So now my mind is going to the worst place and I’m thinking logically and I’m thinking, OK:
My theory is still that it was originally pilonidal sinus disease, with 2 holes - and that what I experience as the “loci of pain” are in fact the holes - just that the holes, being produced by a sharp human hair getting stuck down there, were (on the video I took) and still are too small to see with the naked eye from a distance, so that’s why the doctor didn’t think it was that. There was originally some blood down there - probably after the hair (I’m guessing) made a micro-incision in two places in my bum crack. As often happens when I visit a doctor, I forgot to mention a potentially important detail - the blood - to the doctor. I blame my ADHD!
I think the infection then spread to my prostate, hence the urge to urinate. Not entirely sure how the pressure transmitted the signal to the prostate - maybe just because both the flesh and the prostate gland were both infected, according to my theory, and so swollen and pushing on the fleshy depression in my bum crack would also have placed an unusual amount of pressure on my prostate. Even so, not sure that is anatomically possible, especially given the two holes/loci which are not that close together. Maybe instead they put too much pressure on a nerve which sends a signal to my prostate to let the urine through.
I think the infection also spread on the skin and/or flesh of my bum crack, hence the redness that the doctor could see (which was hardly there at all when I took the video on Wednesday)
I think today, the infection started to spread into my right testicle, and/or my epididymis specifically - something ChatGPT suggested when I asked it about my symptoms. Here’s what ChatGPT said in full:
Standard disclaimer about GPT: it can generate (“hallucinate”) falsehoods without warning, no matter how certain it may sounds, so don’t rely on it without checking every single thing it says, when it comes to health matters
All this potential spreading is very concerning! And I read online yesterday about the last potential stage of spreading of an infection, the worst stage - sepsis. I didn’t pay it much heed at the time - ADHD/testosterone-induced1 carelessness, I guess - but now I’m starting to worry about that as a future possibility. I’ll read up on the symptoms of sepsis so I’ll hopefully notice if it starts happening to me.
But hopefully even if I’m right about everything and it has spread to 3 places, the antibiotic will go to wherever it’s needed in my body and deal with the infections everywhere. That is how antibiotics work, right?
But I’m a bit nervous about masturbating now, given that both my prostate and one of my testicles might be infected. 😳
Meanwhile, the doctor probably thinks it’s something else - he didn’t say what kind of infection he thought it was, just that it was an infection. I’ve checked my email, including my spam folder, but there’s nothing in there from him yet - I’m expecting a copy of a letter reporting back to my NHS GP, which might contain a bit more detail. He prescribed me:
fucibet cream - which does seem to be immediately helping with the pain on the surface of my bum crack - although as I said earlier, that pain can go away by itself temporarily, so we can’t assume that it is
flucoxacillin, an antibiotic. Indeed, it could be this that’s actually helping with the pain, or it could be neither at this stage. Or both.
Maybe he thinks it’s intertrigo - that is a real, common condition, by the way, and not something that ChatGPT dreamt up.
My plan is again, to just go with the flow unless things again get worse. Instead of trusting my intuition, this time I’m trusting the private GP - for now - against my intuition, which tells me the above theory.
But I will definitely start taking high-dose vitamin D every day again, starting today - something which doctors have told me to do twice because my levels were too low already before this started, and which I’ve put off doing for too long. That should boost my immune system, in the long term at least.
I’m undecided about continuing to take some herbal remedies that I’ve been taking recently as a preventative / possible treatment for COVID-19 symptoms, but I think on balance they are likely to help my immune system as well. I just hope they didn’t actually worsen my infection somehow!
This is deliberately ambiguous. I’m not saying whether my T is still elevated from what it was before, despite me having stopped the phosphatidylserine yesterday - I don’t know, as I haven’t had it tested, and it’s kind of hard to know unless faced with a tough situation - or whether even with my low T levels I would have blown it off. But, remember that IIRC, I never sought medical attention the first time I had this problem, when I was 17. I do have a subscription to a general blood test every 3 months, and I’ve got the latest at-home blood test pack, so maybe I’ll take a finger-prick blood test soon and get my T, vit D and cholesterol assessed all in one.