Michael’s experience: My story

Thanks for the site, I’ve found it very useful. I thought it might be useful for you to have my story, it’s a bit different from others’, though in many way’s much the same. I’m 39, married 15 years with two daughters, 11 and 7.

We’d always planned to stick at two kids, my wife’s often suggested having the op, I’ve just never got round to it. When I went to the doctor with a sore shoulder it was the first time I’d been in five years; the idea of raising the op was hovering in my mind has made the appointment, and I plucked up the courage and spoke to the doctor about it having sorted out my shoulder.

The big difference for me from other men is that I have a disability called cerebral palsy. This means I have difficulty controlling my body movements and I often get involuntary movement/shaking. This particularly affects me if I’m a bit nervous – and having minor surgery on the most delicate part of my body certainly comes very high on the list of things that would make me nervous!

I’d anticipated that I’d have to have a general anesthetic and was pleased that the consultant reached the same conclusion on his own. The only disadvantage was that this meant a five-month wait between seeing the consultant and having the op. This gave me far too much time to worry about things – which was compounded by fracturing my wrist in the meantime, having some complications with this relating to my disability, and wondering if the same might happen with the vasectomy.

After the vasectomy

It’s now a month since the op and it really could not have been easier. There’s been no real pain – some very slight soreness and some slight aching but it really could not be called pain. The scratchy balls as the hair grow back have been the worst of it – the rest isn’t bad but scrotum stubble feels like a wire brush!

I started on the frozen peas a few hours after the op. I tried a jockstrap but one of my cuts was almost at the back of the scrotum and the jockstrap rubbed on it and made it bleed a little; I found tight-fitting boxers much better.

The bruising came up the day after – it looked gruesome but was only very slightly sore. It did seem to go down after a week or so but then came up again – maybe I went into loose boxers too soon.

My disability had little impact. Not being able to cross my legs has been difficult, as this is one of the main ways to stabilize myself when sitting, but I’ve got by. It took about two weeks before I could this comfortably.

I also found sleeping on my side difficult the first night, but putting a pillow between my knees helped (I know people with back/hip problems do this to keep their legs apart at night).

So, it’s been amazingly simple really. My wife and I had a bit of a bust-up over her telling her friend about when I’d asked her not to talk about it with people – we just told our oldest daughter as you can’t get anything past her. But we’ve put that behind us and we’re now having fun making up and everything’s working fine.

Submitted by Michael