Otto’s experience: Risk assessment and information balance

I am 33 years old with 2 kids, living in Colorado.

My wife has had type 1 diabetes for 25 years, so from a contraception standpoint we’ve had difficulty finding a permanent solution: Insulin is a hormone, and birth control pills use hormones to regulate her system. Add to that a thyroid problem, and it all adds up to an aversion to messing with the endocrine balance: i.e. birth control pills are not a long-term option for her.

She has friends on the IUD, they have complained of pain and heavy periods. We have 2 kids, both born by C-section, but they were high-risk pregnancies and we didn’t want to do a tubal ligation because we wanted to reduce all possibilities of problems, including post-partum ones. And, I hate condoms. And, we’re done having kids. Add it all up and what do we get? Vasectomy.

Preparation and research

I was given the name of a Urologist from my wife’s OB. I went in for the consultation and he gave me a brief description of the procedure and answered my questions, then presented me with the consent form to sign. Two points he made to me were: 1) Don’t do this if you think you might want it reversed one day and 2) 5% of men who get vasectomies end up with chronic pain. I said “chronic?” He said “yes.” I said “is there anything that can be done,” he said, “nothing that wouldn’t be considered drastic and undesirable”. eek. I signed the forms but decided that further research was in order. The procedure would be in 1 week.

After the consultation, I found this site (vasectomy-information.com) and it opened my eyes to several important issues:

1) Although vasectomy is straightforward, the actual procedure can cause anxiety. Ask your doctor for valium or equivalent to calm your nerves before the procedure.

2) There are several different ways to perform a vasectomy (open/closed, scalpel/no-scalpel), make sure to ask your doctor about them.

One thing I learned from being involved in high-risk pregnancies is that the Internet is not always the best place to look for medical advice. The reason is that there tend to be a disproportionate number of “everything went horribly wrong” stories out there. Why? Because people are (justifiably) outraged and angered when a medical procedure goes wrong and causes physical or psychological damage. This causes them to want to tell everyone about their experiences, which is good, they should tell everyone. But a lot of times when things go right, people don’t bother broadcasting that information, because they think “hey I got it done and now I’m fine, who wants to read about that?” Which is the wrong thing to do, we should all tell our stories. I’m glad that there are both kinds of stories on this site, and they helped immensely in my preparation for the procedure.

Although the open-ended vasectomy sounded like an attractive option, my doctor doesn’t do them, and I called around to a couple of others in my area, but no one does them. I also found that open-ended vasectomy has a higher failure (conception) rate, mostly because some doctors don’t do them right, but nonetheless, a higher failure rate. Plus, several sites list a “lower” incidence of Post-Vasectomy pain with open-ended, but not “zero”. So, either way, there’s a risk of PVP, and with close-ended, it’s a higher risk, but the risk of conception is lower with close-ended. If my wife conceives another child, it could kill her (she had kidney failure with the last pregnancy), so I’m willing to take a higher risk of PVP if it means a lower risk of conception.

The procedure

As I mentioned above, the best piece of advice I got from this site was to make the doctor give me something for anxiety before the procedure. I don’t like needles, I don’t like people messing with my scrotum, put the two together and I’m a stressed-out mess. He prescribed one valium, which I took 1 hour before the procedure. It relaxed me greatly, but I was still a little nervous when the needles went in.

He put three needles in, one at a time: One in each vas, and one in the incision site. My fists were clenched, the nurse held my hand and got me talking, I welcomed the distraction. That was the worst part, and it wasn’t even that bad, everything after that went very smoothly. He did his thing on one side, then on the other, briefly telling me what was going on as he did it. Snipping noises, clamping noises, high-pitched noises (cauterizer). In less than 15 minutes, it was over and I was walking to the waiting room. My wife picked me up and drove me home.

The recovery

Bags of frozen peas, get 3 of them. I kept those babies rotating out of my crotch for 8 hours after the procedure until I had to go to bed. I had some sharp pains, especially on the right side, during the first day. I think that the “shrinkage” caused by the frozen peas caused compression of the testis up into my body, and hence some discomfort in the vas and epididymis. So I just took the peas off whenever that discomfort got to be too much, then iced up again after 30 minutes or so. I kept the peas going on day 2 also but stopped towards the end of the day.

I was given a prescription of Vicodin, which helped but made me quite groggy. My doctor told me to apply an anti-bacterial cream (Neosporin) to the incision twice a day, which I have been doing.

2 days after the procedure

Very little swelling, no black/blue marks or infection at the incision site. Mild discomfort, lots of re-adjusting of the jockstrap needed.

3 days after the procedure

Now there are black/blue marks at the incision site and base of the penis. Masturbated at exactly 72 hours post-procedure. I was a little scared to do this, but wanted to see what would happen! There was some pain in the right testicle as it pulled up higher, which happens during arousal. But I used the free hand to push it back down and the pain went away! I hope this goes away permanently.

4 days after the procedure

Went back to work (desk job). Minor discomfort but for the most part its barely noticeable. No problems.

Final notes

Everything is pretty much back to normal, a little tenderness but I’ve 6 ejaculations and everything seems perfectly fine. No more pain from the right nut. I have no pain now, 11 days after the procedure. Just a little discomfort if I cross my legs or one of my kids jumps in my lap.

I hope this account has been helpful

Submitted by Otto