The Gundecker

I have been out of the military for roughly a decade now. I still work with the DoD (namely Air Force) but I use Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare for all my needs. It’s convenient, doesn’t cost me a time, and if play my cards right, the wait time will be long enough that my student loans are no longer my problem. I can only hope that the US Dept of Education hasn’t figured out how to recruit the Ghostbusters.

Overall, the VA hasn’t been the worst thing in my life. It has been a net positive or completely neutral asset. They have everything you need, primary care, optometry and even an emergency department for when you savages try to drink like it’s the Philippines. It is also reminiscent of medicine in the military as a whole; everyone ignores you until it’s too late and the bed side manner is a coin flip.

The story I’m about to tell is one of my most memorable trips to the VA. It’s a also an experience that SeaDaddy told me “this is a you problem. This is only a thing that would ever happen to you.” He wasn’t in correct so before spoiling so much let us begin the tale…

This was around 2015, I was already out and going to college. I was also still doing Crossfit and doing Olympic weightlifting at the University; needless to say, I was injured quite a bit. This particular moment I was dealing with a patella hairline fracture and as well as a fractured ego. I was regulated to only upper body based movements and it was frustrating to feel like I was gonna end up built like Joe from Family Guy.

One day at the local EOS, I was yearned to do some type of olympic style of lifting. I was in their functional gym space (kettlebells, barbells, and free standing rigs with pullup bars, you know know like a prison cell except more expensive). I decided I would just do hanging muscle cleans to get my jollies off.

I finished up my sets and started to put the plates away. I had a total of 205lbs on the bar (a 10lb, 25lb, and 45lb on each side). I’m a considerable gym rat so I put the plates away off the bar.

The critical error of my ways on this lied with how the weight plates were stacked on the floor, VERTICAL. These were thick rubber plates so often areas would save money by just stacking them in big vertical columns on the floor. These did have a solid metal stanchion you slide the plates onto through their hollow center to keep them relatively organized and so dickheads can’t just mess it up or knock them over.

I slide one 45lb plate over the top of the stanchion and drop it. The level of the entire stack is about hip high with me. I grab the other 45lb plate, face the token stanchion, and slid it over the top to the middle of the plate and let it drop.

The die has been cast. There was no way to prevent the events that were about to unfold. What I failed to realize is that my trusty single-tower tuna trawler was up against the lip of the previous the previous top plate. The terror that is about to unfold is not for the faint of heart.

The 45lb plate came crashing down and landed on the the helmet of my German soldier. “YEEEEOW!” I jumped back quickly and it snapped out of the pinch like a rubber band. After I gained my composure, a couple of seconds, then the fear settled in. I opened my waistband to check on my RHIB (Rigid Hull Inflatable Babymaker). That’s when I saw what was a plum. A plum was sitting on the top of my outstanding gentleman. It was immediate and gaining in size and radiating pain. The clock from 24 appeared in the corner of the screen and I had to act fast.

I forgot to mention, my family uses this particular gym. When I had just obliterated my beef bullet, my mom was walking in to say “hi” she informed me later. She told me she saw me pull open my waistband, and then my face went white so she left me to my own devices. I don’t know if I should be happy my mom let me keep whatever fragile dignity I had left, OR be angry she didn’t come check on me.

As I was walking out of the gym (because fuck this, I’m off to the VA emergency room) I run into my dad who was coming in.

“Hey, son”, he greets “where you going?”
“The VA hospital,” I respond.
“Oh no. What happen?”
“Well,” I said then sheepishly averted eye contact, “I dropped a 45lb plate on myself…”, then I gestured to the site of my injured splatter dagger.

My father’s eyes widen with the worry of his bloodline and namesake.

“Are you okay?”

“I’ll find out in a bit.” I hopped into my car and sped about 30 minutes south to the nearest VA hospital in Salt Lake City.

As one might imagine, turning your meat musket into a purple ping-pong paddle gives you all sorts of worries. The pain wasn’t terrible, but the uncertainty of use in the future was causing me some distress. Does the bloodline die with me? Will I need medication? Will the strength of the minge syringe reach it’s full potential? I drove to the hospital with all the urgency of a chimpanzee going to a banana and infant tasting festival.

I finally get to the VA emergency room which is where the real fun started: explaining to every medical professional my exact mechanism of injury. I shuffle nervously to the front desk. She was cute and probably around my age to add insult to injury. Probably, a student from the University of Utah across the way.

“Do you have a VA health ID?”
I give her my health card.
“What brings you in today?”

I stood there like a deer in the headlights for a couple of seconds because there was no real way that this story was not going to sound as dumb as it actually was. How the fuck can I tell this and not sound like either a deviant or an actual gym airhead?

“Well ma’am, I was at the gym. I was putting some of the 45lb weight plates away, the weights were stacked vertically, and when placed one on over the stack and dropped it, I dropped it on the tip of my penis and now it’s injured.”

God bless this girl because she took this information, did not make a single facial expression in regard to how fucking unfortunate and hilarious it is, and handled it with the utmost professional.

“Oh. Oh my. Please have a seat, we’ll call you back momentarily.”

When I sat down I can just hear her pass the information down the line. Smashed his penis..mumble, mumble…smashed penis…penis like a pancake…

They brought me back to the ER waiting room and the nurse asks “Scale of 1 to 10 on pain?”

“Pain?” I said, “Maybe a 6. Fear is an 11.”

After bringing me back into one of the patient care rooms they had me pee into a cup. An hour after that the doctor came in and check the damage to my pork steeple. He ushered me to drop my pants.

“Hmm,” he examines my parts, and then gives me his assessment, “Well, you’re lucky. The bruising is superficial. Any further down the shaft and you could’ve crushed your urethra, and possibly made yourself impotent.”

Thanks for the bedside manner and comfort, doc.

“Let me go call the on-duty urologist to see they have any recommendations though.”

He walks out of the room and calls the urologist. I can still see his body as he dials on the phone. Once again, I got to hear a grown ass adult explain my pre-dick-ament over the phone.

“Good evening, I have a 27 year old male here who was putting some weights away at the gym, and accidentally crushed his penis between two 45lb plates…no, no he’s not in a lot of pain, it’s just swollen…no, the shaft is in tact and there is no blood in the urine…okay I’ll let him know just to ice it.”

No sooner than when he hung up, literally three male nurses just fucking erupted in laughter. They did not give a cataclysmic fuck that I was in the room. It was cathartic though. The thing I did like about the Navy was the fact that no one had time or energy to keep up the charade of professionalism. If someone has an injury to their slut sword or bacon bazooka, you can only respond with a gutted gasp and then a callous cackle.