Joe’s story: A great wife and a doctor made it a good experience!

I am 43 years old and my wife just turned 40. We have 3 great kids. Our youngest is 10 and we’ve known for the last 5 years that we didn’t want any more children. We’ve been relying on natural family planning and withdrawal for birth control for 18 years and it has always been successful in both planning our children’s births and in preventing unwanted pregnancies. However, my wife and I have always worried almost every month that something could happen and we could be faced with an unwanted pregnancy.

When my wife turned 40 we knew something had to be done. I read that women’s monthly cycles start to become less predictable when they begin to approach menopause so we knew even natural family planning would become riskier for us. My wife has always said that she had the kids and tying tubes is a lot harder on women than a vasectomy is on men so it would be up to me to get the vasectomy. I have always been squeamish about watching medical procedures on TV and I couldn’t even look at the vasectomy pictures on some of the vasectomy websites. But, after reading the personal stories on this and other websites and after talking to a few friends who had gone through the procedure, I decided it was time to get it done.

I friend of mine said he had a no-scalpel vasectomy and it was really not that bad. He said the people that he knew that had post-procedure problems were those that didn’t follow their doctor’s advice when it came to doing no activity for the first 2 days and then limited activity for the next few days after that.

We have two family vacations coming up during the next month and I was really anxious to get my vasectomy done before we left for vacation. My wife can really get “in the mood” while on vacation and I wanted to take advantage of those opportunities when they occurred without having to worry about what day of her cycle she was on.

Last Monday, I called my friend’s doctor to schedule an appointment and found that I would have to wait two weeks just to get in for a consultation and then another week or two for the procedure. I asked if my friend’s doctor had a partner who used the same no-scalpel procedure and found out that there was a partner who used the same procedure and I could see the doctor on Friday. I even convinced the nurse that I was so ready for the vasectomy that we scheduled the consultation and procedure for the same appointment.

The procedure

Friday came and I became both ready and nervous. My wife was wonderful. She said she would go with me and be there through the whole procedure. It was the least she could do after I was with her through all of our three children’s births and all of those OB-GYN checkups. I have to admit, I never really understood all she went through and felt until after I was standing and lying there in the exam room naked from the waist down while some doctor and/or nurse was poking and prodding around my private parts. I would look over at her and she would give me that encouraging smile but I also detected that she was glad I got to finally experience just a small fraction of what she has had to go through with doctors over the last 18 years of our marriage and giving birth to three children.

The doctor was a urologist and was excellent. He was exactly the same age as I was and my wife and I both felt he was very confident about his abilities. He had a positive attitude and a sense of humor about the “delicacy” of the procedure. He had done thousands of vasectomies and was totally calm. We had the consultation and he advised us that vasectomies should be considered permanent and that there were risks, although they were rare. Because I had read a lot on the internet (this site in particular) about vasectomies and other people’s personal experiences, I don’t believe the doctor brought up anything new that I hadn’t already read about. After the consultation, my wife and I were still both 100% ready to proceed.

The doctor asked if I wanted the valium to relax and so my testicles would relax and not get stuck up in my armpits. I laughed and said a valium would be great. It’s funny because the two things I told my wife I was most nervous about was getting an erection during the procedure and/or having the “boys down there” hide somewhere where the doc couldn’t get his hands on them. The valium resolved both concerns.

About 30 minutes after taking the valium, the nurse had me take off everything from the waist down and my wife and I waited in the procedure room for the doctor to begin the procedure. There was a radio in the room and about the time the procedure was to begin the Bachman Turner Overdrive song “Taking Care of Business” was playing and my wife and I laughed at the timeliness of that song. We also had a great conversation about our marriage, life, and the kids while waiting for the doctor to come in. I guess the valium was taking effect because whenever I can relax a little I seem to be much better at talking and having great, meaningful conversations with my wife. I really wanted my wife to be there during the procedure because she really has a way of keeping me calm. The doctor and nurse first objected but when they came in to perform the procedure, my wife remained and the doctor did not object to her being there.

The doctor began by shaving my scrotum while the nurse and my wife watched. By this time, the valium also got me over my inhibitions about being naked in front of female strangers. I had never shaved down there before, and I was really surprised that all that shaving in such a sensitive area could be done dry without any kind of water or shaving cream. The shaving got done and my wife, the doctor, and the nurse were all having a great conversation while he first deadened my scrotum. I felt a couple of sticks from the needle but each time, the doctor warned me it was coming. The sticks were about like those you get at the dentist. After a few minutes of letting the local deadening work, the doc must have pulled or pinched on something and asked if I could feel anything. I could feel a lot of pressure on my left testicle so the doc gave me another stick and deadened the area more. After that, I couldn’t really feel much of anything. Between the valium and the local deadening, I didn’t really know what was going on until I heard the first “snip” where the doc was cutting the left side and I could smell the cauterizing. The right side took a little longer for some reason but I never really felt much of a pulling sensation that others had commented about before.

About 15 to 20 minutes after he first gave me the shot to deaden my scrotum, the procedure was finished. Throughout the whole procedure, the doc and my wife had the greatest and funniest of conversations. He asked if I wanted to keep the removed tube tissues that he had cut out. I said my wife might want them to hang on her rearview mirror. We all laughed but my wife declined.

As I laid there on the table after the procedure was over, the doc warned my wife and me that we would have to continue to use our normal method of birth control for at least 6 weeks until he confirmed by testing my semen samples that I was sterile. I asked him how fresh the samples had to be because we lived 45 minutes from the office. He said they should be “same day” samples. Other couples have told us the samples are supposed to be less than 30 minutes old so they had fun getting the sample in the car. The doc said that some wives had collected the samples in their mouths and even though the couple may enjoy that method of sample collection, the saliva played havoc with the semen test results. My wife and I laughed and said we’d be sure to use an approved method of obtaining the sample.

Post-op

Now, 24 hours after the procedure, I’m doing fine. I’m following the doctor’s orders and my friend’s advice by doing nothing but lounging around on the couch for the first 24 hours and keeping the area cold with ice. I plan to do the same for the next 24 hours. I’ve had no swelling and only minor discomfort in my testicle area. I’ve been taking an antibiotic to prevent infection and I’ve also had a Tylenol with codeine about every 12 hours the minor testicle pain.

I’m looking forward to getting back to normal life and I know my wife and I will really enjoy having more worry-free sexual relations. I’m hopeful that when we do resume sex that there will be no complications or unusual pains that others on this website have described.

To summarize, I’m the kind of guy who is absolutely scared of medical procedures. Thanks to a great wife who was there through it all with me, a doctor with great expertise (he said he has performed thousands of vasectomies), a doctor who was sensitive to his patient’s needs (he explained exactly what he was doing, he often checked to see that I was okay, and he allowed my wife to stay in the room during the procedure), and a doctor with a sense of humor, the procedure went much better and easier than I feared it would be!

Good luck to all of you

Submitted by Joe