Shouldn't his name be Buster Gonad?
Vegas man begs web for $1m to fix gigantic scrotum
An American has turned to the internet to raise $1m to pay for an operation to fix his scrotum, which has swollen to an eye-watering 45kg. Aussie Reg reader Andrew pointed us towards the case of Wesley Warren Jr, who has been afflicted with scrotal elephantiasis for the last three years. The condition is common in Africa, …
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Thursday 20th October 2011 10:14 GMT Marvin the Martian
$1,000,000?
I'm sorry, but that's a ridiculous made-up number. I guess he'll need it to retire on after the say $20,000 operation which made him the world's laughing stock.
For £300K you can have a series of operations to separate conjoined/siamese twins --- from flying them in with parents and lodging those for many weeks in London, to several operations to separate circulation and blood/brain barriers and bone and other tissues, and so forth and so forth.
As if the problem wasn't worth snipping off at 10kg... Or is he so massively overweight that he didn't notice given the overhanging belly?
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Thursday 20th October 2011 10:48 GMT MacGyver
I remember their original M.O., deny claim at first, then deny again, then finally pay after you pushed the issue, and they couldn't figure out any other way to not pay it.
Plus they had the racket of the century going for a while:
Have job at (A), hurt your back forever, insurance company (G) pays while at job (A).
Leave job (A), get job with (B), new insurance company (H) says prior condition, not covered.
Throw in a few more jobs over the years, and everything that hurts and is broken is a prior condition and not covered, still pay high premium, for what's left that isn't broken only
.
I don't know what it's like under the new plan. But I can tell you that the best insurance plan I ever had was under the Army, and it was the very definition of social medicine. Everyone pays the same price (by grade), and whatever is wrong is covered and fixed, period Yet the Repubs in the states think anything "social" is a Russian plot. I have even seen soldiers that were Republican bitching about President Obama trying to give everyone socialized medicine, they didn't even realize that that's what they themselves had. Hell Republican senators have had their own private socialized medical plan for years.
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 12:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
And yet...
...so many Americans think a national health service is a bad thing. If he was a UK citizen, he'd most likely already have been treated and would be on the road to recovery by now. It's obscene that he has to even think about the cost. Oh that's right, I forgot- in American English "socialism" is a synonym for Communism isn't it?
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 14:27 GMT Filippo
Re: BristolBachelor
The USA system tends to let conditions fester until they become emergencies, at which point they can get treated under the public system. This, obviously, costs a lot more to the public system compared to fixing the problem as soon as possible. Chances are that in a proper public system, this condition would have been treated much earlier, at a far smaller cost.
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 20:33 GMT Anonymous Coward
Naughty horse...
Doctors opposed it on the basis of concerns about how they would get paid. Now, they're very vocal supporters as it gives them a nice high income. For consultants, it gives them a tidy wedge to supplement their private work.
The Tories opposed it for their own reasons ;-)
Both were right to question the NHS as a concept, but both did so for the wrong reasons. Now we have an unaffordable, easily exploited system that tries to offer everything to everyone (depending where you are), and fails at most things. Great, we can offer sex changes and IVF, but we can't afford cleaners and A&E waiting times are hours long.
A wonderful, utopian idea, doomed to fail - a bit like most socialist concepts.
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Thursday 20th October 2011 07:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Christopher
Worse.. Even "uncivilized" countries like Iraq used to provide medical services free of charge. Granted; I have no idea how the skills of their doctors fare in comparison with those in Europe or the US, but the fact remains that even there people like him would have been treated.
Makes you seriously wonder about the difference between "civilized" and "uncivilized"...
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 13:00 GMT JohnG
$1 million?
I had two slipped discs, for which I had MRI scans, MRI-directed steroid injections and finally, surgery with a 10 day stay in hospital. This was performed privately in Germany and all the bills added up to about 12K Euros. How can it possibly cost $1 million to chop off someone's balls?
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 13:38 GMT Graham Bartlett
@JohnG
The cost comes from *NOT* chopping them off. (Yay, privatised healthcare. I hope he's not voting Republican next time.)
Mind you, he says "he should be in the prime of life". Perhaps he should be. Except by his own admission he was obese, no job and living on his own at age 44, before any of this happened.
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 14:29 GMT Rameses Niblick the Third (KKWWMT)
@Graham Bartlett
"Except by his own admission he was obese, no job and living on his own at age 44, before any of this happened."
From the linked article:
"Then working on commission finding appropriate sites for ATM machines in the Las Vegas Valley, Warren said he went to doctors off and on for months, including a lymphedema specialist, without finding help. "I kind of gave up," he said.
But the swelling became so large that he could no longer work. He went on disability. And in early 2010 he again entered UMC, hoping that doctors could find a way to take him out of his misery."
So he was working, I cant see it as fair to criticise him for living alone, a lot of people do, and for someone over 6 ft tall, his original weight of 300 pounds does not necessarily make him obese.
A somewhat harsh, and wholly inaccurate comment, in my view.
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 16:52 GMT Zippy the Pinhead
6ft tall and 300 pounds
Ummm his starting weight of 300... he's so overweight it's not funny.. unless he's a body builder on steroids he shouldn't weigh no more than 180 or so.. My insurance company states I should weigh no more than 190 and I'm 6'3". And at his current weight of 450 he would be considered morbidly obese.
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Thursday 20th October 2011 10:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Zippy
"And at his current weight of 450 he would be considered morbidly obese."
Tell you what Zippy, you carry an extra 100 pounds down the front of your trousers and see how active you manage to be. As the guy's affliction is adding 100 pounds (according to the article) to his weight beyond normal, to have only gained 50 pounds is actually quite impressive. People who are mostly housebound tend to pile the weight on much quicker than that.
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Thursday 20th October 2011 16:39 GMT Graham Bartlett
@Ramses
"his original weight of 300 pounds does not necessarily make him obese"
Yes it does, by the medical definition of "obese". It is just about possible to be 6 foot, 300lbs and not be fat. Ronnie Coleman, for instance. But this guy is not a professional bodybuilder, yeah?
As for working, he'd just lost his job.
The reason he says for keeping his nads is that he wants to have kids. I'm just pointing out that on the evidence, this is basically a pipe dream, even without the nads-in-a-wheelbarrow problem.
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Friday 21st October 2011 08:49 GMT Rameses Niblick the Third (KKWWMT)
@Graham Bartlett
"It is just about possible to be 6 foot, 300lbs and not be fat. Ronnie Coleman, for instance. But this guy is not a professional bodybuilder, yeah?"
True, but there is an awful lot of difference between being fat and being obese as you stated. I didn't say he wasn't fat, I said he isn't necessarily obese. By your own example, you can't judge obesity given only someone's height and weight. The linked article also says he worked in security. What kind of role did he have? Well we don't know, but if he was a bouncer, for example, then it's quite likely he would have been in reasonable physical shape.
"As for working, he'd just lost his job."
I suggest you read the article, or al least the post you are replying to. He didn't lose his job, he quit because he was no longer capable of performing his duties.
But hey, let's not let the facts get in the way of mocking the guy with nuts the same weight as a person, eh?
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 14:26 GMT JimmyPage
$1,000,000 ????
Someone, somewhere is taking the Michael. If this is a true figure then the only reason I can think of is that the surgeons insurance company want's to protect themselves against a civil claim if the operation results in loss of one or both testicles.
There, I managed to type all that without saying "balls up". Do I get a prize ?
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 14:26 GMT James Hughes 1
I'm reminded
Of a mate at University, who during a Taekwondo lesson took a cracker to the nuts. He swelled up to the size of a football (I didn't see it thank the deity), and had to have one removed.
Guess he didn't have the million required to just put a pressure relief valve in.
If you are reading this Adam, hope the other one worked OK!
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 14:27 GMT Jason Bloomberg
Reminds me of a joke from way back ...
Man goes to see a doctor; "I've got one ball much bigger than the other".
"Show me", says the doctor.
The patient produces a huge testicle, the size of a basketball. The doctor bursts out laughing, tears streaming down his cheeks.
"Don't laugh", says the patient, "or I won't show you the large one".
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 14:27 GMT peyton?
Not so simple
In the original article, no one can actually say definitively wtf he has wrong with him. He actually has a choice between getting a medicaid covered surgery in-state, or paying the seven figures for UCLA where they claim he has better odds - *in spite* of the fact that they don't say what is wrong with him.
Without more info, this is not a national health system fail (not that we don't excel at that). This just sounds like UCLA is preying on someone who is in a vulnerable state. UCLA actually said 'medicaid would not pay us *enough*'.
(side note: I also don't understand why he won't disclose how much money he has collected so far)
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 16:08 GMT Gareth
A different angle to the dangle...
The story is spun as "man denied medical care by US healthcare system", but he could have surgery under Medicaid (free healthcare for poor people) - he just wants to go private as the expensive cutting-edge techniques have more chance of saving his reproductive functions.
Same as would happen in the UK - if you don't want the NHS option, you have to pay.
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 20:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
The denunciation of Medicare is a bit of a misnomer
Turns out that Medicare WILL pay to alleviate his condition, but for a much less expensive procedure with the risk that he will lose his reproductive organs. This guy wants to raise $1 million for a more expensive, private course of treatment that will carry much less risk to his future in the gene pool.
/sarcasm on
It's not like that due to cost constraints, denying more expensive forms of care that have better potential outcomes ever happens in the NHS....
/sarcasm off
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Thursday 20th October 2011 08:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
It's not necessarily a gene pool thing, in case you were worried about his potential progeny being a burden on humanity. After all, he could probably just have some special sauce frozen now if that were the case. The reasoning is more likely to be the course of hormones that he would be on for the rest of his life, and perhaps there is a risk of impotency or reduced enjoyment of sex if the operation were to go wrong. That should be enough to give anybody pause for thought. Perhaps the more expensive operation wouldn't be available on the NHS anyway - who knows - but the condition probably wouldn't have gotten this far in the first place, and ongoing care is likely to be easier to access and more comprehensive if there is an op cock-up.
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 22:33 GMT Darkone
Photos:
http://howardstern.com/image.hs?ts=1&i=/mini-09-14-11---John-with-Huge-Balls-weighing-his-balls-2.jpg
http://howardstern.com/image.hs?ts=1&i=/mini-09-14-11---John-with-Huge-Balls-on-studio-couch.jpg
http://howardstern.com/image.hs?ts=1&i=/mini-09-14-11---John-with-Huge-Balls-showing-his-huge-balls-3.jpg
http://howardstern.com/image.hs?ts=1&i=/mini-09-14-11---John-with-Huge-Balls-in-studio.jpg
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Wednesday 19th October 2011 22:35 GMT evs
Something smells here
...and not like sweat.
"My balls will explode unless someone pays me (insert pinky in mouth) one MILLION dollars". How much would it cost to get this treated at a 5-star facility in Mexico, Thailand or India. Even if the guy has to pay for two seats treating this can't be more that 1-5% of that vs his claim that UCLA has said "we don't know what it is but if you pay us a million bucks we'll fix it"
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Thursday 20th October 2011 16:38 GMT Malmesbury
NHS
...was in the Conservative Manifesto for 1945. The NHS was planned under the wartime Conservative led coalition.
There were two structures suggested in the original reports. One was to nationalise everything. The second was universal health insurance, with some government facilities - the model that most of the rest of the present day first world uses.
Labour went for plan A. The Conservatives were going to go for plan B.