Nick’s experience: Postoperative problems including blood in ejaculate

Hi, Everybody! Friday I had my first post-procedure sperm count done and I shot double-zeroes (Pause for applause… Thank you! Thank you! You’re too kind) zero live, zero dead. I am now officially the last male of my kind.

Background

Just to fill you in on a few details, I am happily married for 20 years, and we had our second and last child this summer (the elder turned 2 shortly before). We’d decided on a maximum of 2 kids long ago, and had tried for 10 years to conceive with no luck. We were heavily into the preliminaries for the “extreme measures” when suddenly…

We now have two beautiful little girls, and that’s that. Were my wife and I ten years younger, I doubt that I would have been so quick to get the snip, but we’re too old (subjective opinion, of course) to go through another pregnancy. My wife was on the pill for quite a while during the early years, and I couldn’t in any conscience ask her to go back on now, surgery on her was completely out of the question, and barrier methods just plain suck (well they do).

That left the vasectomy. I was far more fearful of another pregnancy than I was about any possible discomfort or pain I might have to endure, so off to the family GP, I went.

The Vasectomy

The initial exam revealed that my right vas was buried too far into the soft tissue for him to be comfortable doing the procedure himself (he took the slam-dunk easy cases, but referred away anything even remotely complicated), so he referred me to a urologist. This turned out to be quite the blessing since my GP didn’t do the real “no-scalpel” procedure, but a slightly more uncomfortable variant. The urologist did the real NS method.

The procedure took about 15 minutes, and that was that. Other than the anesthetic injection, which was over in a second or two, there was no pain or even discomfort.

There was a small scare as I was leaving the office when my two-year-old came running up to me and out of sheer thoughtless habit, I picked her up. Imagine a whole waiting room full of nurses, administration staff, and other patients (all of whom knew why I was there), simultaneously screaming “NOOOOO!!!!!!”

Now it’s funny. Needless to say, if you’re going to have it done, don’t do that.

After the procedure

A week later, after the 1-week celebratory festivities, not only was there blood in the semen, but my scrotum began to turn blue around the incision site. After a few minutes, it was apparent that it was spreading, so I had to get some attention. My urologist’s answering service apparently dropped the ball and didn’t answer the phone, so I had no choice but to go to the ER.

Turned out to be a big nothing – that kind of bleeding is not unheard of (except by me, apparently), and has no long-term consequences. As it turned out, there was a mild increase in my discomfort level, but nothing really approaching pain. There was no recurrence, and today I feel just about normal.

The blood in the semen went away a week or so ago, to be replaced by little dots of clotted blood, which eventually stopped appearing at all. It’s now just about 8 weeks since the procedure (I can’t really call it “surgery”), and I have no regrets. My wife is grateful to a degree that decorum prohibits me from describing here, and as I said before, I feel almost completely normal. I can still feel that there’s some healing to do at the incision, but that little knot gets smaller every day.

Selfishly, the best result of it all is my own state of mind during sex – there’s something very liberating about knowing that from now on, it’s all for love and fun.

Submitted by Nick