
First, this is true. I'm not making it up.
Second, he's OK.
Third, this is funny and it's sad at the same time.
My friend Audra's parents are visiting her in San Fran this week. She has a great uncle, who is 87, that they are semi-reponsible for. Semi-responsible because he gets around very well on his own, still drives and all that jazz. While the parents are visiting, one of the cousins is keeping an eye out on the great uncle. Apparently not very well because she called yesterday to tell them that the great uncle was in the hospital. What makes it worse is that while she is telling them that he had to go to the hospital, she was laughing. OK, usually having to go to the hospital is not a laughing matter and it's not, but why he had to go is kind of funny.
Great uncle decided to take a shower. In his shower he has a plastic chair. Not one of the white shower chairs, but one of those plastic lawn chairs. At one point, he had a towel in the chair. He decided to remove the towel. (This is where it gets bad.) So when he sat down while taking a shower, his testicles slipped between the slats of the chair. I believe that most of the men out there are now clasping their groin area while all the women are probably rolling around on the floor laughing hysterically. Great uncle realizes that this is not a good thing. He doesn't have his medical alert buzzer and tries to extricate himself. He can not remove himself. The story doesn't get better yet. Two days later, he finally manages to get himself and the chair out of the tub, to a phone and calls #911. EMS shows up. They have to cut him out of the chair. He is very swollen and they take him off to the hospital.
He's fine and apparently telling anybody who will listen about his shower ordeal. More importantly, if you know people who should be checked up on at regular intervals, check up on them so they don't sit in a shower for two days.