16-Year-Old Loses Testicle in Freak Accident While Reaching Down to Pick Up Golf Ball

A 16-year-old boy from Utah suffered the loss of one of his testicles after reaching down to pick up a golf ball, according to a case study from the journal Urology Case Reports.

Per the report, the boy suffered a freak accident when one of his testicles retracted inside of him as he reached down. After the incident, he said he suffered from “acute” pain in his genital region when he leaned “over to retrieve a golf ball.” He later checked his testicles and found that his left one had gone missing.

The boy checked into a Salt Lake City hospital because he was suffering from “ongoing mild abdominal pain with persistent nausea.” After he was given some painkillers, doctors performed a CT scan and discovered that his testicle had moved up the canal from his scrotum and almost reached his abdomen. It was thankfully still intact, but he had suffered from what is known as “testicular ascent.”

The boy’s medical history indicated he suffered from a retractile left testis for at least five years, which is when a testicle often travels “back and forth between the scrotum and the groin.” Surgeons were later able to get the testicle back into his scrotum through the use of surgical instruments and "surgically anchored" the testicle "to the scrotum using nonabsorbable suture." The accident was caused due to his patent processus vaginalis, which essentially means that the pathway between his scrotum and abdomen did not sufficiently close up during development in the womb.