Scott’s experience: Nervous wife and a student nurse to contend with!

My name is Scott, I’m 33, and have two daughters. I had been thinking about a vasectomy for over a year before I decided to have it done. While my wife will probably go back to taking the pill after she is done breastfeeding (the pill makes her periods much more bearable), we are both very sure we don’t want any more children and I figured since we are still using condoms anyway, I might as well have it done now. Plus, my wife is such a worrier, two methods of birth control that are both >99% effective might just be enough to make her certain.

I have an HMO, so there were no charges. However, the wait would have been over 4 months if I didn’t ask for the soonest appointment – which was still 2 months wait (and that was between 10 Urologists). I did a search on the web and found there were no doctors in the area that did NSV.

I must thank everyone that has contributed to this website and especially the web author because this site and others like it made me extremely knowledgeable about what to expect. This was especially important since my initial consultation was quite disappointing. The doctor didn’t do a preliminary exam, didn’t explain the possible complications, hardly mentioned how to shave or what to bring. I asked him about an open-ended vasectomy and he had never heard of it. That made me very nervous but I figured if he hadn’t even heard of one, I especially didn’t want him giving me one. However, after reading other’s accounts of their procedures I had a list of questions which he answered to my satisfaction (i.e. do you wear gloves, masks, and sterilize the equipment, how do you seal off the vas, etc.). He also mentioned a few other items like prescribing antibiotics for two weeks after the procedure in case an infection were to occur and he buries the two ends of the vas at different levels in case they grow back. This made me feel much better and he said he has performed thousands of these operations.

They didn’t give me any information on how to shave or how to care of myself after the operation. I chewed out the nurse pretty good saying that was inexcusable. Afterward, I thought that was pretty stupid since she might be the one assisting in the operation.

The vasectomy

I put my trust in God and prayed that he would take care of everything, so I must say I wasn’t nervous at all. I had the procedure done on a Tuesday evening after work, didn’t take any relaxants, nor did my wife attend (I told her I wouldn’t need her there). I’m glad I had it done during the week instead of Friday because of the comments others have mentioned about the availability of the surgeon on the weekends if something went wrong.

After work, I changed into sweat pants and put on my athletic supporter and slip-on shoes. I knew I didn’t want to bend over after the operation. Unfortunately, the nurse that usually assists in the procedure had a family problem she had to attend to so guess who I got as the nurse? Yep, the same one I chewed out. But I think she was much more nervous than I was because she didn’t normally help with vasectomies and wasn’t sure what she was doing. This made me a little uneasy but I figured the doctor would be doing everything anyway and she wouldn’t be doing much. Well, this is where I was wrong. The doctor did things he wouldn’t normally have to do (like turn around to grab equipment) which made the hand he was working on me move slightly and cause me increased pain.

Remembering what others had written, I tried not to shave too much, figuring if it wasn’t enough, they could shave more off. The doctor sterilized the entire area himself and didn’t need to shave anything extra. The initial needle poke was fine, but I felt pain all the way up into my kidneys as the procedure went along. The doctor said this was somewhat unusual but sometimes happens due to radiated pain. I normally have a very high pain tolerance (never get numbed during dental work) and was prepared for pain in the groin, but it surprised me to have pain that high up. For the most part, the right vas went along without too much pain.

The left side was quite different. I had pain right from the start. After the needle went in (which itself wasn’t bad) the pain in my stomach cavity was quite intense. Then the electric cauterizing device arced to somewhere that wasn’t numbed and actually made me yell (scream) and jump it was such intense pain (especially when you aren’t prepared for it). The doctor immediately told me what happened and since I had read about the same thing happening to someone else, I knew it was a fairly uncommon occurrence and just hoped it didn’t happen again. I was worried that my jumping would cause the doctor to make a mistake but he assured me he doesn’t get surprised after doing so many. Then the nurse didn’t release the clamps correctly and cause another set of very intense pain that I almost couldn’t take. Fortunately, it didn’t last for more than about 15 seconds and everything calmed down. He stitched me up and that was it.

I think the nurse caused me more pain than I would have otherwise had (not on purpose I assume). But I think the other pain was just bad luck. The doctor told me to keep ice on the area for a full 24 hours around the clock and to stay off my feet. I had a bag of peas in the car in a cooler to put on my scrotum immediately. I felt a little lightheaded but OK to drive.

The recovery

I had three bags of peas that I just kept rotating for the full 24 hours. I used some padding to protect my penis from the cold. Although it was sort of a pain to have the cold peas on all night, I am very glad I did, because I hardly had any swelling at all. In fact, the only swelling I had was above the base of my penis on the stomach wall, and that was only slight. I turned black and blue within 24 hours on the base of my penis, which seemed different from other accounts. Maybe it was due to all the ice packs. Another thing about the ice packs that helped was keeping my testicles “high and tight” which prevented pulling on the stitches.

I had just a few drops of blood for the next 48 hours. I used tight underwear and my athletic supporter for proper support. The only difficult part was during the night when I would have night erections; the supporter was quite uncomfortable.

The bruising around the wound got to a little larger than a quarter on each side. Also at the base of the scrotum, where it attaches to the stomach wall, a hard nodule was quite sensitive. I assume this was due to the nurse not blotting the blood properly (she ran short on gauze strips) and an abnormal amount of blood formed in the surgical area.

I took it easy for a week, since I was on vacation anyway, and followed the doctor’s orders not to have sex for the first week, which was OK since I was a little sensitive still. The hard nodules near the stomach wall didn’t make sex very comfortable, but I suffered for the cause. Nine days after given the OK to have sex I gave my first sample which was ejaculation number 16. I gave my second one four days later which was number 21. From reading the websites I knew I wanted to wait until after the 15th ejaculation so I wouldn’t have to do a third one.

I found it much easier to ejaculate on my stomach with my penis slightly inside the bottle, this captured all the semen. I found out that it is best to call ahead to verify exactly where to go to give the sample; it was a little embarrassing carrying around a bottle asking several people only to find out that the facility is actually in a different building. It took a week to get the results of the tests but everything was negative, thus, I am condom free!

Now, eight months after the operation I can say that I haven’t had a single problem with the vasectomy, and am very happy I had it done!

Submitted by Scott