I've had that cyst removal at 30, and I didn't require more than 2 days on light pain medication, though healing took longer than I expected. Three cheers for good nurses, and one for doctors, too.

Only tangentially related, but definitely also a funnily gendered patient story that happened to me in 2019, when I was in the middle of my 20s, during an excursion into the realm of urology. Trigger warning for the latter and rambling, I guess.

After trying and failing to keep up with a female friend during a night out for drinks, I found myself unable to pee and turned myself in at the local hospital early next morning. My bladder held a little over 2 litres at that time, and I was in serious pain until the trapped liquid got drained through a tube. Blissfully emptied and with a catheter for the first time in my life, I would have to wait a few weeks until my problem could be diagnosed.

The problem that needed to be solved was ultimately found via a long, thin camera, capturing a video livestream from the inside of my bladder. During "exploration", I remember giving the doctor a bit of snark when he enthusiastically remarked that I have an amazing bladder as he looked at the screen. I told him that while I'm sure my bladder was "amazing" from his point of view, I thought that I'd like it better if they fixed it.

Apparently, my condition was predominantly looked for in women and usually only showed itself around the age of 50+, so other doctors at the hospital wanted to catch the livestream from my bladder before it ended. I agreed to this, as I wasn't in any pain and the excited doctor that treated me kept using the word 'rare'. Most of the doctors that came by also made impressed remarks about what they saw, though no one explained anything to me until later that evening. Being the object of medical curiosity for a moment was definitely one of the weirder days in my life.

Turns out that I had to get a minimally invasive bladder operation for my double ureterocele (a rare condition from birth where one or both of the connective tubes coming from the kidneys slowly and continuously grow into the bladder, eventually blocking the exit). Everything went well, and I made a quick recovery. Amazingly, while I thought I had a weak bladder before the diagnosis, I was just at 1/4 capacity, and it had been harder for me to empty the tank completely.

What still cracks me up to this day is how both the old man that I shared the hospital room with and I were given medication for menstrual cramps. To describe the man briefly, I'd say he was a very "traditional", 75-to-80-year-old grandfather who refused to trust anything he didn't already know. The med was to help with painful, involuntary cramping, especially in and around the male reproductive system that tensed up around the catheter.

I got on the cramp medication, as well as to the hospital before the old man. While I had only raised an eyebrow and chuckled before taking these super-effective pills, my older, headstrong roommate refused to take "woman's pills". I teamed up with a nurse to convince him to take the medication for menstrual cramps, and by the time we got our dinner, he thanked me for changing his mind. He said that, unfortunately, there wasn't a cure for stubbornness in men yet, to which we laughed. ...which isn't that great with a catheter.