What to do About Bumps (Down Below): Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee Discuss the Various Types of Bumps Men Can Encounter Below the Belt

Speaker 1: 

Welcome back to the Armor Men’s Health Hour with Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee.

Dr. Mistry: 

Hello and welcome back to the Armor Men’s Health Hour. I’m Dr. Mistry, your host, here as always with my cohost, the bubbly and effervescent and wonderfully knowledgeable Donna Lee.

Donna Lee: 

Hey guys.

Dr. Mistry: 

Oh boy.

Donna Lee: 

My bubbles are gone.

Dr. Mistry: 

Your bubbles are gone. This Corona quarantine has kind of taken a lot out of all of us. We’re just, I’m really bubbly and giggly about providing this show.

Donna Lee: 

…and getting back to restaurants.

Dr. Mistry: 

That’s right. I’m a board certified urologist. Dr. Mistry is my name. It’s not some gimmicky thing.

Donna Lee: 

Like some guy said it’s M. I S. T. R. Y. when you Google it.

Dr. Mistry: 

That’s right. What are you going to do? I mean, that’s what I was born with.

Donna Lee: 

It’s a wonderful name and it gives a sense of mystery to everything we talk about.

Dr. Mistry: 

You know, I was thinking once another funnily-named urologist in Austin is no longer practicing, then the Mistry Vasectomy is going to be the most famous vasectomy Austin.

Donna Lee: 

There you go, and that’s a thing. Google that. You can see our Mistry Vasectomy technique at austinvasectomy.com.

Dr. Mistry: 

Not everything can sound that way.

Donna Lee: 

Yeah. Every one of our websites. You can email us to armormenshealth@gmail.com.

Dr. Mistry: 

I don’t know about that one. In any case, we are very lucky to have such great listeners, wonderful fan base. I do find it interesting when our patients tell us they just happened to stumble on us for the first time, even though we have huge banners that say we have a show and like emails their show and everything else. So if anybody out there knows how to advertise a podcast or radio show, just let us know. We could have somebody [inaudible]…

Donna Lee: 

Please listen to our podcast. We have a ton of downloads. I always wonder where are these people listening? Like are they in the other part of the world, the country?

Dr. Mistry: 

We’re so thankful, so…

Donna Lee: 

It’s amazing.

Dr. Mistry: 

Maybe if you’re far, far, far away from Austin, please let us know that you’re listening to us because it makes me feel so good. It’s really the listener questions, the listener engagement that makes this show work. Donna Lee, you’re like at the front lines of hearing all these questions. Anything interesting pop up recently?

Donna Lee: 

People working from home and the challenges with staffing. I started answering the phones quite a bit, which is fun because people are like, “Hey this is the same Donna Lee on the radio.” But I’ve never heard so many questions in my life until I started answering the phone. So…

Dr. Mistry: 

Nice.

Donna Lee: 

It’s been very educational on my part because I’m usually on the back end of things.

Dr. Mistry: 

And I would tell patients in general, asking medical questions of the person answering the phone call at a doctor’s office…

Donna Lee: 

Don’t do it.

Dr. Mistry: 

…I’m not sure you’re going to get the, like, you’re likely to get something.

Donna Lee: 

Yeah, no it’s shocking. One today started, the other day started with “I have this medication’s making me nauseous. How are you going to change it for me?” And I’m like, “I’m Donna, I’m answering the phone, so…”

Dr. Mistry: 

“I’ll be happy to find someone that can handle it for you.”

Donna Lee: 

I will get a message over to a board certified human, but that’s not me. But I did have a patient the other day, I thought it was interesting because he called wanted an appointment because he had a very strange bump on the, on his penis, on the side. And he said, “Oh, it just kind of came out of nowhere.” It didn’t hurt, it was like the of a pea. But, so he’s really concerned about it. But I thought we should talk about that on the radio. Because I bet a lot of guys get a weird bump or something on their penis. And they’re like, “What is that?”

Dr. Mistry: 

That’s a great question. Our private parts as somebody once told me today is something that is a source of both great excitement and mystery for us as men. And so when things happen to it, we’re both worried about kind of something being wrong and some kind of assault on our manlihood. Let’s just talk about in general bumps on the penis.

Donna Lee: 

Okay. And this one is under the skin, so, with no pain, no pain.

Dr. Mistry: 

So, I’m going to separate this between acute bumps on the penis. How about we call it B.O.T.P.

Donna Lee: 

B.O.T.P., BOPs?

Dr. Mistry: 

BOPs. So bumps on the penis, the acute bumps on the penis can, the most important thing you’re worried about is something called an abscess or an infection. So usually it’ll be a hair follicle or some type of skin laceration that can get infected. It can fill with pus and it can actually become infected. And if you’re a diabetic or you’re uncircumcised or you have any underlying immunocompromised state like end stage renal disease, that’s something you should get checked out. So if it’s red and it hurts, you should get it checked out because if that’s an infection in there, it may need treatment somewhat immediately. The second class of what I would call acute or recently noted bumps would be something called a sebaceous cyst. So there are sweat glands in the hair follicles along the penile shaft, and if they occlude or get blocked, then the sebum, which is like this very proteinaceous thick material, will collect under the skin and form like a, what looks like a very mobile P. So you’ll move it around the skin. Those sebaceous cysts are not usually something that’s scary. If they’re not bothering you, we don’t usually do anything with them. They don’t go away though. They like stay there. You know, a lot of times men come in because they got a sebaceous cyst of the penis or scrotum and you know, women are looking at it weird and thinking they have something weird.

Donna Lee: 

She’s like, “I didn’t pay for that.”

Dr. Mistry: 

That’s right. It’s the old French tickler.

Donna Lee: 

I don’t even know what that means.

Dr. Mistry: 

I’ll tell ya. I’m going to send you pictures later.

Donna Lee: 

Oh boy.

Dr. Mistry: 

It’s funny, it reminds me of the French tickler I saw on a guy once who was in prison once and he, it was a, it was a ground up mouse bone.

Donna Lee: 

Oh, I didn’t expect you to talk about that.

Dr. Mistry: 

No. In any case, sorry about that. These sebaceous cysts can be easily removed in the office. A little bit of lidocaine, five minute procedure that they’ve popped that thing right out and make it easy peasy for you, if you have one of these little bumps.

Donna Lee: 

Do they come back, like, in the same spot?

Dr. Mistry: 

Not usually. Not usually.

Donna Lee: 

Oh, okay. That’s good news.

Dr. Mistry: 

But people who get sebaceous cysts can often get multiple ones. So just because you have one, you should know that you may get others and they can happen on the scrotum or anywhere along the penile shaft. And then we have another kind of penile bump that can scare a patient, but that’ll be deeper, that’s not right in the skin. That’ll be a deeper bump right on the inner shaft. And that’s one of our famous topics here on the show: Peyronie’s disease.

Donna Lee: 

The Funny Looking Penis, FLPs.

Dr. Mistry: 

That’s right. So it can be associated with just a bump. It can be associated with pain, but maybe not. It can be a social with curvature, but maybe not. But a hard nodule underneath the skin, right on the penile shaft could be representative of Peyronie’s disease, and for those of you that haven’t heard about Peyronie’s disease, or haven’t heard of any of…

Donna Lee: 

You haven’t listened to us.

Dr. Mistry: 

We talk about it every week. It’s probably the most commonly questioned topic that we get.

Donna Lee: 

ED, Peyronie’s and testosterone. But with Peyronie’s, it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a curvature 100% of the time?

Dr. Mistry: 

Not always. That’s correct.

Dr. Mistry: 

Oh, I thought there was always a curvature, whether it was 5% to 90%.

Dr. Mistry: 

Peyronie’s is more likely associated with the nodule or the bump, the bump than it is necessarily always with the curvature.

Donna Lee: 

Oh, I didn’t know that!

Dr. Mistry: 

And so, although most people come in because their banana’s curved.

Donna Lee: 

Like our radio show radio show picture.

Dr. Mistry: 

Like our radio show picture. But the bump is something that happens very commonly. Now there’s a separate set of bumps of the penis and those are going to be associated with moles or genital warts caused by human papillomavirus…

Donna Lee: 

…and dirty girls.

Dr. Mistry: 

Not always. That’s, that’s an incredibly sexist thing to say!

Donna Lee: 

I’m kidding.

Dr. Mistry: 

I’m just saying, it could be dirty girls.

Donna Lee: 

I’m going to get the complaints, not you.

Dr. Mistry: 

And I will say, I will say that human papilloma virus is very, very common. I don’t think at all it means anything about sexual promiscuity or anything of that nature. And there’s actually a vaccine you can get, Gardasil, when you’re young, to kind of guard against sil.

Donna Lee: 

I know. My teenager, I put him through that with his PCP and he’s like, “Why am I getting the shot?” I said, “To protect you from the dirty girls.”

Dr. Mistry: 

Again, it’s to protect the girls from him!

Donna Lee: 

And that’s true too. That’s true.

Dr. Mistry: 

Cowboy, you know. It’s protect them from him. And so you’re not really protecting, but these, this HPV human papilloma virus, can be associated with later development of cancer, like cervical cancer, penile cancer. And so it’s really a life saving kind of vaccine. A lot of parents don’t have their kids go through it because there’s this assumption that if I give, if I make my child go through something, you know, I’m going to assume that he’s going to have sex one day.

Donna Lee: 

Oh, no!

Dr. Mistry: 

Well, guess what?

Donna Lee: 

We need to open your eyeballs!

Dr. Mistry: 

Guess what, mom and dad…you know. I mean…

Donna Lee: 

It’s going to happen.

Dr. Mistry: 

…they’re probably going to have sex and you’d rather them have sex…

Donna Lee: 

And be safe.

Dr. Mistry: 

…and be safe. So educate them on proper contraception and then, you know, something to protect them against HPV is something that I certainly am a big fan of. And it’s not FDA approved or just generally approved that people who have multiple papilloma viruses already get the HPV vaccine. Anecdotally, I will tell you that my own experience has been very positive. And so, you know, sometimes you get a guy with 10, 12, 20 different lesions on them and you burn them off, we freeze them off, we cut them off. They’re, they’re unsightly, they’re embarrassing, and they’re easy to take care of. I mean, we can take care of a whole bunch in one visit. But I will often recommend that men who have multiple episodes of HPV, genital warts, will go ahead and get the Gardasil vaccine. And, personally I feel that it does lead to a reduction overall in their recurrence rates. So that’s our bump in the penis kind of episode.

Donna Lee: 

That was our talk? Oh my goodness. Well that was a lot of information that we jam packed into this segment. As always, Dr. Mistry, M.I.S.T.R.Y.

Dr. Mistry: 

And we are definitely trying to get more Donna, D.O.N.N.A in this episode.

Donna Lee: 

We are, I just don’t like to interrupt you because you’re radio gold with that smooth voice over there. Hey, by the way, the other day, a couple of patients called you, “Dr. Hottie.” What about that?

Dr. Mistry: 

Oooh. Yes. Both of them are established patients of ours and they’re correct.

Donna Lee: 

The staff loved it. That’s so funny. Anyway, Dr. Hottie and I will be back next week.

Dr. Mistry: 

Why don’t you tell people how to get ahold of us?

Donna Lee: 

That’s right? You can email us at armormenshealth@gmail.com. Our website is armormenshealth.com. A lot of you’re sending your questions through the website and that’s perfectly wonderful as well. I’ll still respond to them. You can call us during the week at (512) 238-0762. You can ask for me. If I’m available, I will tell you a joke and you can visit us in Round Rock, North Austin, South Austin, and Dripping Springs. And Dr. Mistry, that segment just flew right by.

Dr. Mistry: 

It sure did. Thank you very much.

: 

Have a wonderful, wonderful day. The Armor Men’s Health Hour is brought to you by Urology Specialists of Austin. For questions or to schedule an appointment, please call (512) 238-0762 or online at armormenshealth.com.