Kevin’s story: My vasectomy experience

I am a 44-year-old father of three that has been happily married for 21 years. My wife and I have been contemplating having a vasectomy for years, but there was always something that came up and we never took the time to have it done. Finally this year we made a plan and followed through. We went to the doctor for the initial consultation and everything was fine, however, the doctor told me that I had a tight scrotum and that he may have to actually put me under and perform the vasectomy in a surgical atmosphere. We set the date and he gave me a prescription for one valium to take one hour before the procedure.

The day of the vasectomy

The day came and My wife was more nervous than I was. I took the valium at about 08:15 and my appointment was for 09:00. We arrived about ten minutes to 09:00 and I was called right in. The nurse had me sign a release form and took my blood pressure and then instructed me to remove my clothes and put on a gown and lay down on the table. The doctor came in and after a few pleasantries started by swabbing me down with a cold sterile solution. He then started manipulating my vas deferens to pull them to the surface and I felt a tugging feeling and slight discomfort that I had expected. The nurse was helping him and he was having a difficult time getting the first vas deferens to be where he needed it to be. The nurse was standing by to hold it in place with an instrument when he got it to where he needed it, but it kept slipping back into my scrotum.

He must have worked on the first vas deferens for ten minutes and then the nurse says “Doctor, I don’t feel well at all”. Needless to say, this didn’t make me feel very well myself. She left my side and went over to a countertop and laid her head down on it. The doctor shouted out into the hallway through the closed door for assistance from one of the other nurses, all the while trying to manipulate my vas deferens to get it to stay put. A nurse came in and assisted the first nurse out into the hallway and I could hear conversations out in the hallway about getting a stretcher for her to lay on and for someone to get her medical records. I kind of joked with the doctor at this point about not seeing something like this on one of those doctor television shows. The second nurse came right to my side and immediately assisted the doctor and in just a few minutes he had my vas deferens clamped at the surface and gave me an injection to numb the area further.

Let me say that by now I was feeling more pain than discomfort but after the injection, all was well. I didn’t know he was finished with the first side until he reached over to manipulate the second side. The second vas deferens cooperated better than the first, however, I still felt some pain and it felt as if he was lifting me off the table when he was pulling the vas deferens up towards the surface of the scrotum. In a few short minutes, he finished that side and remarked to me that I had made him work to get the job done today. He finished with stitches and told me I could get dressed and to come back at my convenience in a week or two to check on how everything looked. I got dressed and went to the waiting area and my wife was surprised that I wasn’t walking a little funny but I really felt no pain in my groin at all. We went home and I made sure to wear my jockstrap and placed a bag of frozen peas on my scrotum for an hour then changed bags with a freshly frozen bag about every hour till bedtime.

Post-op recovery

The next day, and for about three or four days later it felt as if I had been tapped in the testicles from time to time. Not all the time – just now and then. I waited a week to test the plumbing by myself and did this a few times the following week until My wife and I could wait no longer and tested everything out together. There was virtually no pain at all except for the incision area. I might add that I didn’t know until the first time that I went to the bathroom after the procedure that I had a midline vasectomy, which makes sense about the pain I was having while he was moving things around. He was pulling the tubes from both sides the center of the scrotum and fairly high on it as well.

Once the stitches fell out I could hardly see any scarring at all but there is still a small lump of tissue at the incision site which is just some scar tissue under the surface of the skin. My doctor requires six weeks before the first semen specimen and then two weeks later for the second one. After talking to fellow workers that have had it done and seeing a few articles, it seems that most of what I see is that after about ten ejaculations most men appear to be sterile. I go in for my first specimen to be taken tomorrow and I have had about thirty-plus ejaculations so I obviously hoping for the so-called green light from the lab, and the wife. As a side note, I did have some bruising on each side and even one bruise on the bottom side of my penis but no swelling at all. I also wore a jockstrap for a week and the times when I wasn’t wearing it (shower, toilet, etc.) I could definitely tell that gravity was not my friend, but after the week was up and I stopped wearing it within a couple of hours I had no discomfort or odd feelings at all. The bruises lasted almost two weeks.

Submitted by Kevin