These balls gotta go! Warning: graphic descriptors ahead.

Tuesday night I was emptying one of my drainage bulbs, aka ‘my balls’ and a strong odor of fish startled me. I mean, I did eat fish for lunch and dinner, but it was cod which is relatively bland. Was this normal? Of course I had to Google it.

It’s a hard one to phrase. Drainage bulbs smell like fish? Can drainage bulbs smell like food recently eaten? Amelia kept repeatedly getting the same Google result about eating seafood and another unmentionable body part smelling. Highly entertaining, but very uninformative.

The next morning I called the doctors’ office hoping to hear that yes, what you eat effects the fluid in your balls (I think I like saying balls). They needed me to come in. When I got there, the surgeon was not at all concerned about the smell because I had no fever, fluid was clear, no redness, no swelling, and yes, it could very well be what I ate that affected the smell. Fortunately, the drainage bulb in question was also ready to come out because the fluid was well below 30 cc’s a day.

A snip of a stitch, a 1-2-3 followed by a quick pull, and out it came. I can’t say it hurt because it was literally for half a second. Even though much of my under arm and side are still quite numb, my body feels much better without an eight-inch tube inside of it. One down, one to go.