The patient, who had prostate cancer, kept asking his urologist for an appointment, but the doctor refused for no clear reason. Meanwhile, the patient was in unbearable pain and struggling with extreme constipation.
The waiting was torturous, and the pain only grew worse.
Desperate, he went to another hospital for a second opinion. By this time, his condition had worsened significantly—he had a terrible smell, and something unusual was protruding from his rectum. Before seeing the new urologist, he had to visit a general surgeon first.
The surgeon quickly examined him and then called the new urologist, saying, “There’s something unbelievable you need to see.”
And it truly was. When the surgeon touched the patient’s rectum with her finger, an enormous amount of foul-smelling fluid suddenly gushed out, spraying right into the urologist’s face.
It turned out the fluid came from the patient’s prostate tumor. The tumor had grown so large that it filled much of his abdominal cavity, twisting around his organs like a massive snake. The “snake’s head” was what had been trying to push its way out through his rectum.
It was shocking that the original urologist had let the patient suffer like this. The cancer had consumed much of his body, and he needed urgent, extraordinary care from his new medical team to survive.
Thankfully, he did.
SOURCES: Dissections of the male genitalia and upper thighs: four figures, with the arteries and blood vessels indicated in red. Colored lithograph by J. Roux, 1822. Wellcome Collection. (© public domain)
