Fair warning - I'm about to talk about a doctor getting more familiar with me than I'd normally allow someone without at least having bought me dinner first. After a week and a half of discomfort in my - let's just say "below the belt" (no. Not there. Behind there) I finally screwed up the courage to go try out the British National Health Service. To be more accurate, my bride got tired of hearing me complain about the pain in my ass, and told me I had to go or she'd give me a pain worth complaining about. That, and it's hard to explain to your 2 year old "No, honey, I can't pick you up. My ass hurts." So I did what any good 21st century patient does, I armed myself with as much semi-knowledge I could from The Internet, and went in fearing I had anything from what's affectionately known over here as 'piles' to an alien a la Sigourney Weaver growing inside my colon. The doctor was kind enough not to roll his eyes at my forays into self-diagnosis, and pulled on a pair of gloves. He then informed me that no, he couldn't go ahead and diagnose me unless I climbed down off the cabinet and let him actually examine me. And no, there was no doctor available who didn't have hands that required gloves that had to be specially ordered from Giants 'R Us. We made a deal. He got to examine me and I got to swear loudly during the examination. Turns out, my prostate has decided to attack me. (How does this cause a pain in the backside, you ask? The words "colon" and "spasm" were used in the same sentence.) Every man must face the fact that one day, if you live long enough, your prostate is going to go hay wire and become your body's equivalent to the drunk uncle at the family holiday party - it will loudly demand attention, annoy the hell out of everything around it, and cause no end of discomfort until you do something about it. The doctor labelled the condition 'prostatitis.' Which means there's no apparent cause for it, just "bad luck, mate" to quote the medical professional with 10 years of higher education. The English tranlsation of the medical term -itis is apparently "sucks to be you." As the doctor filled out a prescription for antibiotics, however, he said "this is the same stuff we used to treat anthrax with." Oh. Goody. The good news is, my prostate is supposed go back to its corner within a couple of weeks. The bad news is, I have to do performance reviews for my team in the next couple of weeks, and pain makes me grumpy. Well, bad news for them, not for me.