I subsequently announced that I had solved my own problem by purchasing new 'belts one size smaller than I was accustomed to.  This seemed the ideal solution.

Shortly after I bought these new dancebelts, I began to notice a most odd sensation in my groin - as if my left testicle had moved out of place, and was banging up against the inside wall of my scrotum.  This was a unique feeling, but one that was intermittent and of short duration.  I thought that it was just one of those things, and that it would go whence it came.

It didn't. The feeling persisted, and grew, and became more frequent.  There was some pain associated with it, but not much, at the top of the testicle.  My right testicle was not affected, at first.

One day, about two weeks after this first started, I was in the ballet school dressing room and, in the act of removing my underwear, got the shock of my life - my scrotum was empty, there was no there there.  I probed the area thoroughly but gingerly, and found both testicles partly lodged in my groin, like eggs in egg cups.  Although I was able to dislodge them and knead them back into place, I was afraid, very afraid, and had a most awful class.  (Made worse by a very crowded dressing room after class.  I changed back into my street clothes in record time.)  The next day, I called my primary care physician, who gave me a referral to a urologist.

The urologist saw me on very short notice.  He told me that my testicles had indeed retracted into my groin, into a channel called the "inguinal canal."  The testicles reside in the inguinal canal until birth or shortly thereafter.  The canal remains open in all men, providing a haven of rest or warmth at certain times (orgasm is one such time; exposure to cold, such as immersion in cold water, is another).  But only rarely do the testicles spontaneously reascend.  

The urologist diagnosed a hernia.  I have never had a hernia, although I had been prone to pre-hernia weakness of the groin when I was a kid.  There didn't seem to be any reason why I should cross the the threshold from pre-hernia to actual hernia, but many hernias have no obvious explanation.  I didn't think to tell the doctor that I took 4-6 ballet classes a week - it just didn't seem important at the moment.  (If I had advanced in class to the partnering and lifts stage, the connection would have been obvious.)

After I left the doctor's office, I finally had a Eureka moment, and associated my new dancebelts with the displacement of my testicles.  This seems reasonable, since the herniation process began right after I started wearing dancebelts that are a size smaller.  When I called the doctor the next day, he agreed that this was a probable cause, but I now had a choice:  quit ballet, or have (gulp!) surgery.

Quitting ballet is unthinkable, so I'll go under the knife.

• You need a second opinion! - balletboy - 09.10. 04:10:32
  • Re: You need a second opinion! - Dr. Dancebelt - 09.10. 15:37:29
• Re: A lesser-known hazard of dancebelts - Paul at - 09.10. 02:50:52