On Thursday, October 17, I did something that I had wanted to do for quite some time: I got a vasectomy, i.e. I got “fixed”. That affirms my commitment to a childfree life, as this stops the little swimmers right in their tracks, more or less cutting off their path to the outside world.
It’s funny how these things happen. The first time that I had ever heard of a vasectomy was out on the road. I was out with Mom, and I spotted a car with a bumper sticker that said something to the effect of, “Against abortion? Get a vasectomy.” I didn’t know what a vasectomy was, and so the message didn’t make any sense to me. Both parents always followed a policy of answering questions from my sister and me truthfully and thoroughly, and so this was no exception. So Mom explained what it was, i.e. it was a procedure that, at the end of it, makes it where a man is unable to produce children. I already had a decent handle on female sterilization procedures, because my mother had a tubal ligation done while she was already in the operating room for my sister’s birth (we were both caesarean babies). So I already knew that such a thing could be done on women, but until that moment, I didn’t know that there was an equivalent procedure that could be done on men. Good to know. Then later on, there was an episode of Home Improvement that aired when I was in the ninth grade, where Tim Allen‘s character gets a vasectomy. It really did a good job explaining how a vasectomy works, and addressed a lot of the myths surrounding it, and it really made it feel like a normal thing that men do, and it doesn’t make them any less manly for doing it.
That said, I recognized from a fairly young age that I didn’t want to have children of my own (I really could never imagine myself as being a father), and so it made sense to get a vasectomy. I had felt this way at least as far back as my early twenties, and it’s never changed. However, I also had no relationship prospects or anything like that at that time which would make a vasectomy necessary, plus Walmart insurance was laughably bad in those pre-Obamacare days (hello, $1,000 deductible at a job that only paid $7.00 an hour). But I knew that I eventually wanted to do it in order to permanently put any possibility of future children to rest.
I was starting to get serious about getting it done in 2020, but then the pandemic happened, and with all of the unnecessary safety theater that we were all subjected to in the name of COVID-19, I tabled the idea because it was something that there was no urgency for doing, and I didn’t want to deal with any of that nonsense. So that was where things stood for a while. I was going to do it when I was ready, and this year, I finally decided that it was time. My original idea was to go to a MedStar urologist, since I do a lot of my healthcare stuff through MedStar, but long lead times and inconvenient locations for the urology department stymied that. I would have had to go to either Chevy Chase or McLean, and it would have taken months to get an appointment. I wasn’t feeling that, so I ended up going to Chesapeake Urology. They were able to get me right in, and I had my initial appointment in September.
That initial appointment was easy enough. They showed a video explaining how the procedure worked, and then the doctor came in, and we discussed the procedure and all of the nuts and bolts of it all. I had expressed interest in a no-scalpel vasectomy, because it seemed like an easier procedure, but the doctor explained that it was really a marketing thing more than anything, i.e. a small puncture vs. a small incision. Then came the necessary evil, where the doctor actually has to look at your junk. But I get it – he had to locate the parts that he would be working on, and make sure that all was well there. Then it was just a matter of scheduling the procedure itself, which would be done at a surgery center. That was the easiest thing to do because, since the whole thing was being done under local anesthesia, and thus I would be awake and alert the entire time, there was no pre-work that I needed to do, nor did I need to arrange for a ride. No blood draws, no fasting, and I could drive myself there and back.
Once I got there, I had to fill out some paperwork, which was the usual thing where I give them my consent to perform the procedure, various health information, and insurance information. I paid my copay, and then they called me back. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let Elyse back, but we already knew that because I asked about it during the office visit. I wanted Elyse to be there for it, but if the doctor didn’t want to do that, it wasn’t a big deal.
In the room, the first thing that they had me do was change into the hospital gown. Basically, take everything off except for socks and glasses and leave it in the corner. I was to hold onto my underwear so that they could put that back on me as soon as they were done. I wish that I had known about that part ahead of time, because then I would have brought a fresh pair rather than the pair that I had been wearing. That would have made me feel more comfortable, but it was too late by that point. Then I got up on the table, which could sit up and recline and go up and down. The underwear, which I placed in the bag that the hospital gown originally came in, went under the pillow. With that done, it was time to get started. The first thing that they did was shave the area where they were going to work. In the office visit, I was told that I did not need to shave, and that they would shave what they needed themselves. I think that I would have preferred to be told to shave myself, because having some random woman shaving your dickhair felt more than a bit awkward. That awkwardness was all on my side, though, because she acted like it was nothing, likely having done the same thing on many different guys hundreds of times before. I suppose that I could have still shaved down there on my own if I really wanted to, but again, too late for that.
When the doctor arrived, the first thing that he did was to again locate the items that he would be working on, i.e. the two vas deferens tubes. About the only thing that I felt was when the needle first went in for the local anesthesia. After that, I felt some tugging here and there, but my balls were numbed up quite well. The procedure itself was very quick, taking about five minutes to complete on each side. Basically, it was just a matter of making a tiny little hole, pulling out the tubes, cutting the tubes, cauterizing the ends on both sides, cauterizing the opening to close it back up (so no stitches), and then repeating on the other side.
I was lying on my back for the whole procedure, so unfortunately, I was not in a good position to watch. What I ended up finding myself doing was looking at the big light that was over the table where they were working. This was your typical operating room light, i.e. a big, movable light with a handle right in the center. And this one bothered me greatly. Most LED operating lights that I’ve seen have the diodes distributed fairly evenly across the entirety of the surface. Not this one. This one had them arranged in nine rays radiating out from the center. The problem was that the rays were not evenly spaced. Two rays, which were horizontal from my perspective, were directly opposite each other. Then above that, there were three rays, and there were four rays underneath that, i.e. they were spaced unevenly. Here’s an illustration of what that light looked like:
That is not okay. You don’t know how long I was staring at that trying to make sense of it before I realized that it was just plain uneven. Thing is, there was enough space for a tenth ray to make it all even and give every single ray a mate, but they didn’t do that, instead going for nine unevenly-spaced rays around the center. I suppose that if there’s anything to be said about that light, it did distract me from the work being done down below, and made the time go more quickly.
Then after everything was done, the first thing that the assistant did before I even got off of the table was to help me put my underwear back on. That, after all, was to provide support to the boys, which had just been worked on. They also gave me a thick pad of gauze to place in there. Then I got my discharge instructions, which were to take it easy for a day or so, and to activate this cold pack that they gave me for the ride home. Once I got home, I was to use ice on the surgical site, 30 minutes on and 30 minutes off, in order to prevent swelling. Then about eight to ten weeks, I would need to submit a sample to a lab for analysis to verify that I was clean. Then with that all done, I got dressed and Elyse and I left to go home.
After driving home, with a stop or two to facilitate a couple of things that Elyse wanted to do, I spent most of the rest of the day sitting at my desk wearing pajama pants with a quart-size bag of ice against my nuts. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to having the ice against everything down there for most of the day, but once I started with the ice, it actually didn’t feel that bad – enjoyable, even. By having ice against what is normally a very warm part of the body, it kept me cooler, which I appreciated. However, it did quickly start to look like I had wet myself, as condensation from the ice in only a plastic freezer bag got all over everything around it. The time spent with the ice off was definitely useful for helping with evaporation of the water (but that evaporation also kept things cool). I only had to use the ice for the first day, and then was allowed to discontinue it for good when I went to bed. But the ice did its job, as I experienced no swelling.
The next day was pretty easy, spending most of it at my desk working on things (finishing Midwest Road Trip and Walking to Starbucks in the process), and then going grocery shopping later on in the day. And then I was back to work on my next scheduled workday, which was Saturday. Unlike other surgeries I’ve had, I didn’t miss any work for this one, doing it all over the span of my regular days off. All in all, this was a very easy procedure, with one office visit and one surgical center visit. And now, five days after the procedure, things are healing just fine, with very minimal discomfort, as well as some minor bruising (both of which are normal and to be expected). Not bad at all.