Mark’s experience: Three weeks of worry

I found this site very helpful in the weeks leading up to my vasectomy and, now that the monkey is finally off my back, I thought should submit my own experience.

With the birth of our third child, last year my wife and I agreed that our family was complete. We did not want to have to continue shelling out for birth control for the next 15 to 20 years nor be subject to one of those “Oh what the hell…” moods that you can find yourself in on a cold night after a few drinks.

I decided that this was going to my responsibility, that putting my wife under a knife was not something that a real man should do. That being said, I told her to renew her birth control subscription “for now” and did not mention it again.

Cleaning up the balloons and cake after the baby’s first birthday, my wife very tactfully commented that she might be able to lose that last ten pounds if “only I could get off of these birth control pills”. “Oh, I love you just the way you are,” I said without looking up from the paper. I could feel the withering look through the Sports Page and knew that my number was finally up.

So I made the appointment for the counseling session. I had planned to ask a number of careful, learned questions that would impress the doctor with my medical insight. Instead, I ended up sweating through a good shirt I would end up having to wear all day and stammering into my shoes that “yes I was absolutely sure that this was the right decision for me”. Not sure about anything at that point, I scheduled the procedure for a full three weeks later and settled down to a new life as a complete nervous wreck.

Lessons learned at this point include:

1. Take a list of questions to the counseling session in case you get nervous and draw a complete blank.
2. Once you are committed, get it over with as soon as possible. The waiting is the worse part.

Looking back from the seasoned vantage point of almost 24 hours later, it is already hard for me to remember what it was I was so worried about. It wasn’t being sterile – I was pretty comfortable with that – It wasn’t the pain – I used to play football and by almost all researched accounts this was pretty painless. I think really I was most concerned with the claustrophobic horror of having to climb naked onto some guys table and hang out there for half an hour making conversation while he poked and pulled and snipped and burned and sewed… while talking about the unusual early fall weather we were having. You really can’t match that for ‘loss of control’ in a situation and that was probably my biggest fear. I am admittedly a bit of a control freak.

I remember reading with envy of the foreign practice of general anesthetic for this procedure. What could be more ideal than to wake up with no memory of it all and a bit of a headache? My doctor had not even mentioned the possibility of a Valium and for some reason I never let myself ask about it. Looking back I wish I had. I mean sure it is only a half an hour out of your life, but if you were as worried as I was, why put yourself through it for no reason? I don’t know, somehow I thought that would make me look weak. I’m not sure who I was trying to impress.

Well the day arrived, the vasectomy was scheduled for 4:30 pm and they told me to arrive a half an hour early, to bring a jockstrap, and to have someone there to drive me home. The night before I had shaved my entire scrotum and trimmed any other hair in the area I thought might possibly get in the way. I had puzzled over how the heck are you supposed to shave your scrotum, but it wasn’t really all that difficult – take a sharp razor and a light touch and pull the skin taught here and there as necessary. It sounds like it would be fun to have your wife do this, but I don’t think I’d recommend that. You are the only one who will know how much pressure should be applied. It did end up being more hair than I thought it would be.

I went to work for an incredibly unproductive day and then left early to pace around the house snapping at the kids for an hour or so. We already had the frozen peas in stock and the whisky on the counter for the homecoming. The sitter arrived to watch the kids and my wife and I left for our “appointment”.

You hear all the time about how surprisingly quick it all is and on this, I have to disagree. I mean, sure the procedure was no more than a half an hour, but time itself slowed down to a crawl. We got there early and the receptionist told us the doctor was running late. All in all, we ended up having about 45 minutes to kill so we picked up magazines and read. Truth be told I could not slow down enough to actually read anything, but kind of just flipped through pictures. My wife observed that I was “breathing funny”. I apologized bitterly and asked if she would prefer that I sit somewhere else. After several paper cups of water and associated restroom trips, the nurse finally called “Mark?”

So here it was, the culmination of three weeks of dread. I squeezed my wife’s hand and walked through the door.

On the other side, a guy named Bill shook my hand and advised me that he was going to be the nurse for my procedure. Bill asked me to follow him down the hall and into a room where there was a chair with the expected stirrups. I wasn’t quite ready for the stirrups chair and luckily he told me to sit in a normal chair. Bill talked a bit about what was about to happen, asked me if I had any questions, I had none, asked me to sign a form stating that I understood the risks of infection, and then asked again if I had any questions. I asked Bill if there was something I ‘should’ be asking. He laughed and said “not really, no.'” He then also remarked that I was breathing very rapidly and I replied that I was, in fact, quite nervous. “Well, that’s very normal”. Bill told me that he was going to go get the sterilized tools for the doctor and that meanwhile I should remove my clothing from the waist down and hop into “the chair”.

The rest of it goes like this. The doctor came in and talked about this and that then covered me up with some paper sheets. They didn’t tape my penis up (which I had been strangely worried about) but instead just sort of flipped it out of the way and put some more sheets over it. I should interject here that I cannot possibly imagine how anyone could get an erection at this point.

The doctor asked if I wanted him to keep talking or rather to just shut-up through this. I told him to keep talking. They grounded the cautery gun against my leg. The anesthetic shot into the skin of your scrotum does not hurt at all and the doctor claimed that would be the worst part. It in fact was not. I made a big point of not watching any of this but I knew enough of what was going on to know that it was when he was cutting the vas that hurt me the most. It’s not the actual cut, but the pressure during the cut back down into your ball(s) that made me jump. It’s a sudden sick ache. Then it’s done. They cauterized (nothing at all) and then sewing… funny, but struck me like lacing a shoe. “Halfway there,” said the doctor which was a bit of a heartbreaker, but it was over in another 15 minutes. I staggered out and here I am.

That was yesterday. Today the frozen peas have helped. I’ve been pretty careful, spent the better part of this afternoon writing this (I’m a slow typist and it killed the time). The pain is not on your scrotum, it’s a lower gut thing – not a “kick to your balls” but more like a “toddler’s elbow to your balls”. I have not, as yet, felt ready to risk the bounce of sex… but I did wake up with a big morning stiff so at least that part of the process is working okay. Mostly I feel a need to take it easy. One thing, I put off wearing the jock because I have always felt that it was an uncomfortable, silly piece of clothing. I was hurting this morning and gave it a go. It’s just right somehow and I asked my wife today to pick up another at the store.

For our family, I did the right thing by having a vasectomy and I feel good about that. This was a great website for me and I hope it helps other guys. Good luck!

Submitted by Mark