Well, since they just picked the NCAA men's basketball tournament teams, it must be vasectomy season, so I thought as a public service announcement I would publish the diary of disaster that I kept when I had mine done about 10 years ago.
If you are about to have the surgery, don't read below this line.
However, if you have a friend who is about to go under the knife and want to have some fun with him, what you can do is ask which doctor is performing the procedure and then say, "Actually, I'm pretty sure that is the same doctor that did my friend's." Then copy the below into an email and send it to him.
After a year-long negotiation with my wife that involved me getting a truck, cash and future time fishing, I finally had the surgery. Here is my story…
Day of Surgery: I bought my jock strap and ice packs the day before. I throw on my sweat pants and it is off to the doctor. Since they put me under general anesthesia (I HIGHLY recommend this) for the procedure, my wife is with me to drive me home. In the waiting room while I read about how great Alabama running back Mark Ingram is in Sports Illustrated, I feel a general sense of foreboding and feel myself start to “turtle-up” as I try not to think about what is about to happen.
Probably the weirdest part of the whole thing is when I am talking to the Resident Evil Doctor who was prepping me for surgery about the decline of Miami football (where he went to school) while he was shaving and rubbing iodine on my sack. On later reflection I think this part should have been a lot more uncomfortable for me than it was. I think I may have been in shock at this point though. Head Doctor comes in. They hit the meds. I am out cold. I wake up and the wife comes in to help me into the jock. One of the first clues that something may be amiss is that even in my groggy haze I remember feeling something slippery on the floor as I was about to step into my jock strap. I got a paper towel and picked up a small, dark tubular section of what had to be my formerly intact sperm superhighway (vase). On the positive side, yes it is supposed to be out. But on the negative side, I can’t figure out how it ended up on the floor. Was I thrashing around? I do that a lot when I dream.
I get home and ice down my jangles. Ice is my best friend for the next two days. It is by far the best way to fight the pain. I stay on my back the rest of the day reading and watching movies. I see an uplifting documentary about an American hero who overcame his fears and battled back from injury and betrayal by his best friend, Mike Honcho, to defeat his arch-nemesis – a very talented homosexual French racecar driver. The film is called “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” and it lifts my spirits and takes my mind off the severe pain and depression………….…at least for 1 hour and 48 minutes.
Day 2: I wake up at 3:45 a.m. from a very pleasant dream in MASSIVE pain. Well that answers one question. I guess the mechanical part of the equipment still works. Hopefully the plumbing will work too. I stay awake for two hours terrified of going back to sleep and slipping back into a dream that brings back the pain. I try to think unsexy thoughts. Still on my back all day. Keeping the ice on it. It feels like a truck ran over my balls. I have a weird pain in the left side of my stomach every time I need to go to the bathroom. I change out the bloody gauze.
Day 3: I get up and rejoin the living. I take my first shower in two days. I kind of miss the movies. I take it very easy all day. Still ice, ice baby. I’m feeling much better than the day before, kind of like I had sex with a brick wall for about 5 hours. But I can move around and the super pain meds are working.
Day 4 – 5: I feel pretty good. Just a dull ache now with the pain meds. Still wondering how guys go to work at this point because there is no way I could. Luckily I am off for Christmas break.
Day 6: Something is very wrong. My right side feels fine, but my left nut is swollen to the size of an orange. I am in a LOT of pain. I call the doctor. I call again. I call again. I get through and they have me come in. Turns out I had a small “complication” with the recovery. They give me more meds and I go home and hit the ice again. Ice, then hot bath. Over and over.
Days 7 – 13: The swelling on the left side slowly goes down as I keep up the hot baths and take the meds. Plumbing works. Still wear the jock every day.
Day 14: I’m feeling normal again. Left nut swelling and pain are finally down. Finishing out the medication. Still wearing the jock. I return to work and greet some of the guys with a very high-pitched voice, just to be funny. They laugh.
Days 15 – 36: Feeling good. Balls seem bigger than I remember before the surgery but I can live with that. Still have the battle scars, but everything is working. Shoot my first deer, a nice 10 point buck, in desperate attempt to recapture some of my lost masculinity.
Day 37: Wake up in Florida at 4 am for an early flight back to Houston and I am in some pain. I think it is probably the seared tuna I had the night before and hope it will pass. I spend 2.5 hours on a cramped little plane. When I get off I am in a lot of pain and cannot stand up straight because of the pain in my stomach. It feels like there is a brick in there. I walk, hunched over to the car and head to work. I talk to my wife who suggests I head home if I cannot walk, but I soldier on.
At work, I make it to lunch. The pain is getting worse. I stagger over to the elevators and 3 different people ask if I hurt my back because I am hunched over and moving at a snail’s pace. One of them, a friend of mine, sees me doubled over and walks over to offer some advice. In a very animated and intense whisper he starts telling me about his chronic constipation and that the only solution he has found that works is an at-home enema. He briefly describes the process and tells me that I can buy a kit at any drug store. Normally I would assume he is joking but he looks very sincere and I can tell he is serious. I’m thinking “No way in hell am I EVER buying an enema kit!!!” I make it downstairs and almost pass out in the salad line. I call up and let them know I’m heading home to take it easy.
I stop by the drug store on the way home and buy an enema kit. I wait until there is no one in line to check out as I am very embarrassed about my purchase. When I get home and open up the box I’m expecting a giant, insidious-looking rubber hose with some sort of valve and sink attachment and hopefully some lubricant, but what I find is a simple clear plastic squeeze bottle that looks suspiciously similar to the ones Emeril uses on his show to add olive oil to his dishes – BAM! I read the instructions which are fortunately very simple as I am not a trained medical professional. It says to fill the squeeze bottle with warm water and shoot it up your butt. On the second try the enema works, which gives me a brief sense of both accomplishment and relief (that it is over).
Still battling some pain and now severe emotional trauma from the feelings of self-violation caused by the enema, I curl up in the fetal position the rest of the day.
Day 38: I wake up and feel a lot better. I know I should probably go to the doctor but have a big meeting at work I don’t want to miss, so I head in. I’m in some discomfort all day but now it seems to be emanating from my old nemesis from Days 6-13, “Lefty”. I check things out and it turns out that Lefty doesn’t look right. I ignore this hoping things will improve.
During the meeting with an important customer, I’m pretty sure I am confusing him. I sound semi-professional, but my body language is very strange. I keep opening up my legs wider and wider to relieve the pressure. I am very uncomfortable, and he seems to be uncomfortable with me trying to talk business while stretching like a gymnast prepping for a floor routine. Other than my provocative non-verbal communication, the meeting goes fine.
Just my luck, that night my church is putting on a “date night” where they have dinner and a husband/wife speaker who are talking about building a successful marriage or something like that. I have already committed to the deal so I go. The food is pretty good and the guy gives his talk which can be basically boiled down to the statement – “Listen to your wife.” Given my condition, I find the message very ironic.
During intermission before the lady starts her part of the presentation I am in the bathroom and ask a couple of my buddies, Tony and Mike, if they want to skip the lady’s part and go shoot around in the gym. It is very tempting, but we decide (in a 2-1 vote) that ditching our wives during a date night/marriage seminar at church to go play hoops may be difficult to categorize as “loving them as Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her”, so we all go back in. The lady speaker says a bunch of stuff that I don’t remember. I mean she drones on and on and on. But there was one message that I do remember clearly – “Wives should have sex with their husbands because there are plenty of other ladies out there who are willing to.” Good message. I somehow manage to not yell out “AMEN!!!,” for which my wife is very grateful.
I go to bed with a bad feeling. The swelling/redness/pain seems to be increasing.
Day 39: My wife wakes me up around 4:00 am and takes my temp. 101.6. She says I was generating so much heat that it woke her up. I take some Tylenol and go back to sleep. I wake up on this Saturday 3 hours after my usual wake-up time and feel terrible. My left nut is red and swollen up like a lemon. I call the doctor who says to go to the ER.
There is one at the clinic right across the street so I walk over, cowboy style with legs spread far apart. When I get in, I have to explain to the admitting nurse the reason for my visit so she can decide the urgency. I am extremely embarrassed about having to share this intimate information with a female that I do not know, so I speak in a barely audible voice to her. Whispering about my big balls to a lady who is not my wife makes me feel kind of like a perv, but luckily she doesn’t seem to find the conversation too creepy and they take me back quickly.
When the ER doc sees my balls, he gasps. I take this as not a good sign since I would assume ER doctors see a lot of strange things. He tells me to not stop anywhere but head down to their main hospital’s ER in the medical center. When I enter, they are waiting for me. They do an ultrasound of my sack to make sure there is nothing structurally wrong. The ultrasound was just like the one they did when my wife was pregnant, except they wouldn’t let me see the screen. I thought I heard two heartbeats, but I can’t be sure.
Fortunately, there is nothing structurally wrong. The nurse taking the ultrasound, a very large Samoan lady, after seeing my condition asks if I need a wheelchair, even though she saw me stagger in under my own power. My left nut is ridiculously large at this point. They diagnose a massive infection (again) in my left nut and order antibiotics. They tell me that I am going to get a shot of antibiotics before I go too and take me back to an interior waiting room to wait for my shot.
I hate shots. But since I get to watch some of the Duke/Georgetown basketball game instead of the Barney video that was playing on TV at home, I feel pretty good about the trade-off. A male nurse comes in and tells me, “Now, I’m not going to lie. This shot is going to hurt like Hell!” It is after this point that I get the BEST news I have heard all day. That news: the shot will be in my butt, not my nut. I’m ecstatic! It doesn’t hurt that bad.
I go home and take it easy. I reflect on the fact that every emergency room professional that saw my sack could not hide their horror. Also, I think I answered the question: “Have you engaged in any risky sexual activity recently?” about 100 times. I guess they did not believe me.
Day 40: I skip church and take it easy. Spend a lot of time on my back. Pain and swelling are still terrible. I’m wondering when the antibiotics will kick in. Wife seems a little annoyed that I am not helping her with the kids. Whatever.
Day 41: I show up at my Urologists office first thing on Monday. Back to where it all began. His intern sees me and gets that same horrified look on his face that I have seen so much the past few days. They check my prostate just to make sure, which SUCKED! Worse than an enema. I felt so violated. They give me some meds for the swelling and confirm the ER doc’s assessment and antibiotics. Doc tells me he sees what I have in about 3 out of the 250 surgeries he does every year. That knowledge doesn’t make me feel better.
Day 42-44: Swelling is going down. Pain is subsiding. Antibiotics must be working. I’m hoping for another full recovery and no relapse this time.
Epilogue: I went through two more courses of antibiotics before the persistent infection was finally tamed. The last antibiotic was the strongest they could prescribe before sending me to an infectious disease specialist. Along with the obvious physical trauma, I picked up some mental scars that I hope will someday heal.
One thing that struck me as strange was how accustomed I got to having male doctors and assistants handling my sack. I went in so many times for the infection that the disturbing feeling of being fondled by guys just started wearing off. A prolonged period of not having sex with your wife because your nuts always hurt combined with always being intimately touched by fellas is just a recipe for weirdness. At one point during an examination while my pants were down and the doctor had his hands on my balls he asked me if I worked out and started talking about my muscle-tone. I hadn’t worked out in years and while I was flattered by the question, the timing made me very uncomfortable. Was he trying to upsell me on the testosterone injections that are a major part of his business (hopefully) or hitting on me (hopefully not)? Anyway, while I was flattered, I didn’t stick around to better understand his intentions. As soon as my pants were up, I was out of there.
When you go through a catastrophe like this, sometimes you find out who your real friends are. Since it is not every day that you get the chance to ask your friends if they would give up their left nut to help you, I thought I would take advantage of this rare opportunity. I told several friends and clients about my ordeal and then lied (I hoped) and said that I may need a testicular transplant at some point. I would then ask in a very serious tone, “If I do need a transplant, can I count on you as a donor?” I got some great responses. One friend just stared blankly, speechless. I could tell his mind was racing and he was trying to figure out what he should say and if I was joking. A client told me he could donate but he doubted I could handle it and said it would probably shoot me across the room because his was so powerful. Another friend and co-worker told me honestly, “Sure, but you will need to test it out. I’m not sure if it still works. I haven’t used it in a long time.” He was having some marriage problems.
In addition to finding that I have some good and funny friends, there was one more positive that came out of the disaster that was my vasectomy. I am now able to predict weather changes before they occur. Much like a veteran with an old combat injury, my left nut swells up when the weather is about to change. Just the other day my wife was walking by the shower and looked over. She said, “Looks like a cold front is about to blow in.”
If you are about to have the surgery, don't read below this line.
However, if you have a friend who is about to go under the knife and want to have some fun with him, what you can do is ask which doctor is performing the procedure and then say, "Actually, I'm pretty sure that is the same doctor that did my friend's." Then copy the below into an email and send it to him.
Journal of Pain
After a year-long negotiation with my wife that involved me getting a truck, cash and future time fishing, I finally had the surgery. Here is my story…
Day of Surgery: I bought my jock strap and ice packs the day before. I throw on my sweat pants and it is off to the doctor. Since they put me under general anesthesia (I HIGHLY recommend this) for the procedure, my wife is with me to drive me home. In the waiting room while I read about how great Alabama running back Mark Ingram is in Sports Illustrated, I feel a general sense of foreboding and feel myself start to “turtle-up” as I try not to think about what is about to happen.
Probably the weirdest part of the whole thing is when I am talking to the Resident Evil Doctor who was prepping me for surgery about the decline of Miami football (where he went to school) while he was shaving and rubbing iodine on my sack. On later reflection I think this part should have been a lot more uncomfortable for me than it was. I think I may have been in shock at this point though. Head Doctor comes in. They hit the meds. I am out cold. I wake up and the wife comes in to help me into the jock. One of the first clues that something may be amiss is that even in my groggy haze I remember feeling something slippery on the floor as I was about to step into my jock strap. I got a paper towel and picked up a small, dark tubular section of what had to be my formerly intact sperm superhighway (vase). On the positive side, yes it is supposed to be out. But on the negative side, I can’t figure out how it ended up on the floor. Was I thrashing around? I do that a lot when I dream.
I get home and ice down my jangles. Ice is my best friend for the next two days. It is by far the best way to fight the pain. I stay on my back the rest of the day reading and watching movies. I see an uplifting documentary about an American hero who overcame his fears and battled back from injury and betrayal by his best friend, Mike Honcho, to defeat his arch-nemesis – a very talented homosexual French racecar driver. The film is called “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” and it lifts my spirits and takes my mind off the severe pain and depression………….…at least for 1 hour and 48 minutes.
Day 2: I wake up at 3:45 a.m. from a very pleasant dream in MASSIVE pain. Well that answers one question. I guess the mechanical part of the equipment still works. Hopefully the plumbing will work too. I stay awake for two hours terrified of going back to sleep and slipping back into a dream that brings back the pain. I try to think unsexy thoughts. Still on my back all day. Keeping the ice on it. It feels like a truck ran over my balls. I have a weird pain in the left side of my stomach every time I need to go to the bathroom. I change out the bloody gauze.
Day 3: I get up and rejoin the living. I take my first shower in two days. I kind of miss the movies. I take it very easy all day. Still ice, ice baby. I’m feeling much better than the day before, kind of like I had sex with a brick wall for about 5 hours. But I can move around and the super pain meds are working.
Day 4 – 5: I feel pretty good. Just a dull ache now with the pain meds. Still wondering how guys go to work at this point because there is no way I could. Luckily I am off for Christmas break.
Day 6: Something is very wrong. My right side feels fine, but my left nut is swollen to the size of an orange. I am in a LOT of pain. I call the doctor. I call again. I call again. I get through and they have me come in. Turns out I had a small “complication” with the recovery. They give me more meds and I go home and hit the ice again. Ice, then hot bath. Over and over.
Days 7 – 13: The swelling on the left side slowly goes down as I keep up the hot baths and take the meds. Plumbing works. Still wear the jock every day.
Day 14: I’m feeling normal again. Left nut swelling and pain are finally down. Finishing out the medication. Still wearing the jock. I return to work and greet some of the guys with a very high-pitched voice, just to be funny. They laugh.
Days 15 – 36: Feeling good. Balls seem bigger than I remember before the surgery but I can live with that. Still have the battle scars, but everything is working. Shoot my first deer, a nice 10 point buck, in desperate attempt to recapture some of my lost masculinity.
Day 37: Wake up in Florida at 4 am for an early flight back to Houston and I am in some pain. I think it is probably the seared tuna I had the night before and hope it will pass. I spend 2.5 hours on a cramped little plane. When I get off I am in a lot of pain and cannot stand up straight because of the pain in my stomach. It feels like there is a brick in there. I walk, hunched over to the car and head to work. I talk to my wife who suggests I head home if I cannot walk, but I soldier on.
At work, I make it to lunch. The pain is getting worse. I stagger over to the elevators and 3 different people ask if I hurt my back because I am hunched over and moving at a snail’s pace. One of them, a friend of mine, sees me doubled over and walks over to offer some advice. In a very animated and intense whisper he starts telling me about his chronic constipation and that the only solution he has found that works is an at-home enema. He briefly describes the process and tells me that I can buy a kit at any drug store. Normally I would assume he is joking but he looks very sincere and I can tell he is serious. I’m thinking “No way in hell am I EVER buying an enema kit!!!” I make it downstairs and almost pass out in the salad line. I call up and let them know I’m heading home to take it easy.
I stop by the drug store on the way home and buy an enema kit. I wait until there is no one in line to check out as I am very embarrassed about my purchase. When I get home and open up the box I’m expecting a giant, insidious-looking rubber hose with some sort of valve and sink attachment and hopefully some lubricant, but what I find is a simple clear plastic squeeze bottle that looks suspiciously similar to the ones Emeril uses on his show to add olive oil to his dishes – BAM! I read the instructions which are fortunately very simple as I am not a trained medical professional. It says to fill the squeeze bottle with warm water and shoot it up your butt. On the second try the enema works, which gives me a brief sense of both accomplishment and relief (that it is over).
Still battling some pain and now severe emotional trauma from the feelings of self-violation caused by the enema, I curl up in the fetal position the rest of the day.
Day 38: I wake up and feel a lot better. I know I should probably go to the doctor but have a big meeting at work I don’t want to miss, so I head in. I’m in some discomfort all day but now it seems to be emanating from my old nemesis from Days 6-13, “Lefty”. I check things out and it turns out that Lefty doesn’t look right. I ignore this hoping things will improve.
During the meeting with an important customer, I’m pretty sure I am confusing him. I sound semi-professional, but my body language is very strange. I keep opening up my legs wider and wider to relieve the pressure. I am very uncomfortable, and he seems to be uncomfortable with me trying to talk business while stretching like a gymnast prepping for a floor routine. Other than my provocative non-verbal communication, the meeting goes fine.
Just my luck, that night my church is putting on a “date night” where they have dinner and a husband/wife speaker who are talking about building a successful marriage or something like that. I have already committed to the deal so I go. The food is pretty good and the guy gives his talk which can be basically boiled down to the statement – “Listen to your wife.” Given my condition, I find the message very ironic.
During intermission before the lady starts her part of the presentation I am in the bathroom and ask a couple of my buddies, Tony and Mike, if they want to skip the lady’s part and go shoot around in the gym. It is very tempting, but we decide (in a 2-1 vote) that ditching our wives during a date night/marriage seminar at church to go play hoops may be difficult to categorize as “loving them as Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her”, so we all go back in. The lady speaker says a bunch of stuff that I don’t remember. I mean she drones on and on and on. But there was one message that I do remember clearly – “Wives should have sex with their husbands because there are plenty of other ladies out there who are willing to.” Good message. I somehow manage to not yell out “AMEN!!!,” for which my wife is very grateful.
I go to bed with a bad feeling. The swelling/redness/pain seems to be increasing.
Day 39: My wife wakes me up around 4:00 am and takes my temp. 101.6. She says I was generating so much heat that it woke her up. I take some Tylenol and go back to sleep. I wake up on this Saturday 3 hours after my usual wake-up time and feel terrible. My left nut is red and swollen up like a lemon. I call the doctor who says to go to the ER.
There is one at the clinic right across the street so I walk over, cowboy style with legs spread far apart. When I get in, I have to explain to the admitting nurse the reason for my visit so she can decide the urgency. I am extremely embarrassed about having to share this intimate information with a female that I do not know, so I speak in a barely audible voice to her. Whispering about my big balls to a lady who is not my wife makes me feel kind of like a perv, but luckily she doesn’t seem to find the conversation too creepy and they take me back quickly.
When the ER doc sees my balls, he gasps. I take this as not a good sign since I would assume ER doctors see a lot of strange things. He tells me to not stop anywhere but head down to their main hospital’s ER in the medical center. When I enter, they are waiting for me. They do an ultrasound of my sack to make sure there is nothing structurally wrong. The ultrasound was just like the one they did when my wife was pregnant, except they wouldn’t let me see the screen. I thought I heard two heartbeats, but I can’t be sure.
Fortunately, there is nothing structurally wrong. The nurse taking the ultrasound, a very large Samoan lady, after seeing my condition asks if I need a wheelchair, even though she saw me stagger in under my own power. My left nut is ridiculously large at this point. They diagnose a massive infection (again) in my left nut and order antibiotics. They tell me that I am going to get a shot of antibiotics before I go too and take me back to an interior waiting room to wait for my shot.
I hate shots. But since I get to watch some of the Duke/Georgetown basketball game instead of the Barney video that was playing on TV at home, I feel pretty good about the trade-off. A male nurse comes in and tells me, “Now, I’m not going to lie. This shot is going to hurt like Hell!” It is after this point that I get the BEST news I have heard all day. That news: the shot will be in my butt, not my nut. I’m ecstatic! It doesn’t hurt that bad.
I go home and take it easy. I reflect on the fact that every emergency room professional that saw my sack could not hide their horror. Also, I think I answered the question: “Have you engaged in any risky sexual activity recently?” about 100 times. I guess they did not believe me.
Day 40: I skip church and take it easy. Spend a lot of time on my back. Pain and swelling are still terrible. I’m wondering when the antibiotics will kick in. Wife seems a little annoyed that I am not helping her with the kids. Whatever.
Day 41: I show up at my Urologists office first thing on Monday. Back to where it all began. His intern sees me and gets that same horrified look on his face that I have seen so much the past few days. They check my prostate just to make sure, which SUCKED! Worse than an enema. I felt so violated. They give me some meds for the swelling and confirm the ER doc’s assessment and antibiotics. Doc tells me he sees what I have in about 3 out of the 250 surgeries he does every year. That knowledge doesn’t make me feel better.
Day 42-44: Swelling is going down. Pain is subsiding. Antibiotics must be working. I’m hoping for another full recovery and no relapse this time.
Epilogue: I went through two more courses of antibiotics before the persistent infection was finally tamed. The last antibiotic was the strongest they could prescribe before sending me to an infectious disease specialist. Along with the obvious physical trauma, I picked up some mental scars that I hope will someday heal.
One thing that struck me as strange was how accustomed I got to having male doctors and assistants handling my sack. I went in so many times for the infection that the disturbing feeling of being fondled by guys just started wearing off. A prolonged period of not having sex with your wife because your nuts always hurt combined with always being intimately touched by fellas is just a recipe for weirdness. At one point during an examination while my pants were down and the doctor had his hands on my balls he asked me if I worked out and started talking about my muscle-tone. I hadn’t worked out in years and while I was flattered by the question, the timing made me very uncomfortable. Was he trying to upsell me on the testosterone injections that are a major part of his business (hopefully) or hitting on me (hopefully not)? Anyway, while I was flattered, I didn’t stick around to better understand his intentions. As soon as my pants were up, I was out of there.
When you go through a catastrophe like this, sometimes you find out who your real friends are. Since it is not every day that you get the chance to ask your friends if they would give up their left nut to help you, I thought I would take advantage of this rare opportunity. I told several friends and clients about my ordeal and then lied (I hoped) and said that I may need a testicular transplant at some point. I would then ask in a very serious tone, “If I do need a transplant, can I count on you as a donor?” I got some great responses. One friend just stared blankly, speechless. I could tell his mind was racing and he was trying to figure out what he should say and if I was joking. A client told me he could donate but he doubted I could handle it and said it would probably shoot me across the room because his was so powerful. Another friend and co-worker told me honestly, “Sure, but you will need to test it out. I’m not sure if it still works. I haven’t used it in a long time.” He was having some marriage problems.
In addition to finding that I have some good and funny friends, there was one more positive that came out of the disaster that was my vasectomy. I am now able to predict weather changes before they occur. Much like a veteran with an old combat injury, my left nut swells up when the weather is about to change. Just the other day my wife was walking by the shower and looked over. She said, “Looks like a cold front is about to blow in.”
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