“Your choice tonight. Bid on a scalpel-free vasectomy *or* a 13-piece cutlery set for DIY fans.”
This funny tweet from the local PBS station’s annual fund-raiser auction caught my attention.
While I had wanted to have a distraction-free discussion with my wife about whether I should get a vasectomy, I’m a sucker for a deal and it was currently going for half-price.
Plus, the money would support a station that was providing our then “much watch” series Downton Abbey, so I simply asked her if I should bid.
She said “sure” without even looking up from her phone, so I called in a bid of $375.
Bidder’s remorse quickly set in as two questions crossed my mind. Was this procedure covered by insurance? What did I know about this doctor group given I’m pretty particular about who I let touch my boys?
After staying the top bidder all night, I was relieved when someone outbid me by $20 right as the auction closed. Then the next morning that relief turned to disappointment. My insurance said they would only cover 80% of the procedure so my out-of-pocket would be $560. Moreover, I found several connections to this well-respected doctor group.
Even though I lost out on the deal, the auction helped confirm I was ready to go forward with something me and my wife had just talked about in passing for over a year. I scheduled the vasectomy with one of doctors at the company that donated the certificate rationalizing I’d get better service as full-paying client than one that got a 50% off deal anyway.
To calm my nerves before the vasectomy, I researched what the procedure would entail. There were very few first person accounts online, so I turned to my friends.
Their advice ranged from “it’s a piece of cake” to “don’t be shocked when you smell the smoke from your flesh burning.” The more helpful comments were “have plenty of frozen peas and drugs handy” and “schedule it on a Friday on a big sports weekend.”
I got the peas, changed my vasectomy date to a Friday, and then read the information packet the doctor’s office had sent.
It requested I show up to the appointment with my nether regions clean shaven along with the completed paperwork and a pair of compression underwear. Since I always leave patches of unshaven hairs on my relatively flat face, I was stressed taking a razor to a round surface...or in this case two round ones.
The doctor’s office called the Friday morning of my appointment and asked me to show up an hour earlier. Wait, did someone get cold feet or was my doctor in a rush to get to make his tee time?
I thought I was pretty calm when I showed up. However, I accidently paid for my vasectomy with my work credit card (something I didn’t catch until the following month). Then two separate nurses asked at different times, “Are you nervous?” My response to both was “Should I be?” Clearly they saw my anxiousness.
Since I hadn’t taken advantage of the doctor’s offer to come in a week prior to discuss the procedure, we started with a brief consultation. He wanted to make sure I was committed and knew that vasectomy reversals are painful, expensive, and aren’t always successful. I told him I was blessed with 6 and 8 year old daughters and I’ve watched enough episodes of “Teen Mom” to know I can’t handle toddlers at my age.
The doctor then laid out all risks, namely the possibility of moderate discomfort for a couple of months and in rare cases the loss of a testicle. Seeing as how everyone has a different definition of the word “rare”, I asked the doctor for his. He said in his 10 years it had not happened to one of his patients. Moreover, I wasn’t in a high risk group.
Since that was only mildly reassuring and this was the first time I met him, I name dropped some of the mutual doctor friends and acquaintances in hopes I’d get extra attention.
When the doctor left, I zeroed in on his elaborate instrument tray. It made the procedure seem more complicated and painful than I anticipated. I asked the nurse if anyone backs out. She said not at this point. Then she told me to strip down, so she could prep me.
For some reason I thought the vasectomy would be just one-on-one with my male doctor. She noticed my quizzical look and offered me a “modesty sheet” but said as soon as I lie down it’d need to come off. I declined it and she cleaned up my shaving job as I had “missed some spots.”
The doctor came back in and clamped down an area for him to work before injecting an anesthetic to the right side of my scrotum. It was about 25% more painful than a typical shot, but it hurt less than I expected.
He then severed my vasa derentia (or at least that’s what Wikipedia calls it) before stitching the incision shut. There wasn’t any pain, but it was a very weird sensation. It felt like there was a tailor hemming a pair of pants but the tug was focused on your ball sack instead of the bottom of your leg.
What made it even stranger was when the doctor tried to start a very normal conversation while he was doing it. It reminded me of my dentist who always asks a complicated question as he puts a tube in my mouth. They might be comfortable starting conversations under these scenarios, but I wanted him 100% focused.
The doctor then said he has to duplicate this again on the left side so get ready for a prick from the needle. I was light headed and asked if he’s ever been tempted to tell a patient here’s a little prick for a little prick. He said that’s something he would only consider for his friends. If it’s a bad idea to loan friends money, I think it’d be equally bad to have them cut into your privates.
He finished the left side so I asked “What grade would you give yourself on the job, a B+?” He responded he’d get an incomplete as he needs to go back and redo the stitch on the right side as it was still bleeding.
After re-stitching it, he told me I may feel some discomfort on this side so I can cut out this stitch myself in four days or let them dissolve in a week. I told him I’d take extra three days of discomfort over scissors given my lack of dexterity.
The entire appointment took an hour, while the vasectomy itself took less than 15 minutes. In closing, the doctor warned me to “not to go into battle without my weapons” until I bring back a sample in 12 weeks that shows I no longer have any “swimmers” aka active sperm.
The nurse put my to-go cup in a bag and told me to return it within an hour of filling it with a semen sample. Since I live an hour away in rush hour traffic, I told her my appointment would need to be mid-morning as law enforcement would frown on me filling a roadie as I weaved through traffic.
I walked back to my car gingerly but without pain and drove myself home. I grabbed the peas out of the freezer and found a full bottle Tylenol. I hoped they’d still be effective even though the first thing I saw when I picked them up was they were three years past their expiration date.
Then I started catching up on my DVR. An hour later I switched to bag #2 of the peas only to discover they were actually blueberries. Because they are similar size, they worked fine until the bag leaked making my black and blue balls more blue than black.
I crashed early Friday night after three hours of icing and slept like a baby. I put another round of frozen peas on in the morning and took two more Tylenol. There was a dull ache and the rub of the stitches was uncomfortable. However, on a scale of 1 to 10 the pain was only a 3.
I’m usually not a fast healer, but for some reason I remembered my orthopedic doctor telling me for sports injuries if the pain is less than a 6 you have little chance of aggravating it. I coupled this irrelevant sports advice with my recollection of a baseball teammate who once played a game with me two days after his vasectomy.
I jumped to the ill-advised conclusion I was 100% healed after just 18 hours. That weekend I foolishly stopped using the peas as I left my couch to coach both of my girls’ soccer games, paint my deck, and volunteer at a charity golf event.
My poor choices caught up to me Monday as I had trouble getting in and out my car for work. I also struggled to stay dry while I sat on the toilet as I soon realized how low I was hanging. When I got home, a self-examination revealed that my stem and berries were now mostly berries and they were the size of lemons.
The pain was minimal. However my unwanted enlargements made my daily tasks more belabored. Clearly I had overdone it and was paying the price. I went back to the regiment of the frozen peas and Tylenol with the necessary and unpleasant addition of diaper rash cream and hydrogen peroxide (don’t ask).
When I updated my friends who told me their vasectomies were a breeze, they all now regaled me with stories about someone they knew who was swollen for weeks because they didn’t rest for the full doctor subscribed three days before starting back slowly. That advice was a little late and their texts asking “how you hanging” or praising my “big balls” were not very amusing.
When I told my Mom, I was going to recap my experience, she said be careful because “once in print, always in print and you have two daughters.” Judging from the number of people who reached out on the fence about getting a vasectomy, my exposing myself with this cautionary tale will be worth it.
A vasectomy is a relatively painless procedure that when coupled with prescribed rest typically has very few side effects. My advice is to talk to your partner face-to-face, do some research, listen more carefully to what the doctor says, clear your calendar, and get yourself a list of shows to binge watch so you aren’t tempted to leave your couch.
In other words, do as I say and not as I did.
