Closing the Baby Shop, Part 2

There were a handful of other patients in the waiting room of the urologist’s office. I was the youngest one there by three decades, easy. It was a startling glimpse into the future.

I took a seat and dug into the mountain of paperwork, which included a plethora of Really Useful information about vasectomies. The doc was already a half-hour late, so with nothing better to do, I began to read. Amongst the papers was a jaunty little pamphlet simply titled “Vasectomy” in big bold letters that had a lot of illustrations. It was like an elementary school book, only with a lot more penises. On the cover, a cartoon couple was holding hands on the beach. The man had a sly look on his face, as if he had just asked his wife to do it right there on the sand. The wife had a slightly annoyed look, as if her husband had just asked her to do it right there on the beach. It was not clear if the man had just been snipped or was just about to be.

Inside, the pamphlet offered an idealized world of vasectomies. Everything was bright and clean, without pain or suffering. One picture promised what I could expect after the surgery:



Look at how happy the man is in his Lay-Z-Boy and slippers. Look at how happy his wife is to serve him. See, it isn't so bad...you get apple slices! I’m glad I have this booklet so if WonderWife™ refuses to bring me apple slices, I can wave it around and say, “But the pamphlet says you have to!”

The doc finally showed up and after approximately three seconds of small talk asked me to take off my pants. He made a comment about the room being cold. Normally I would take offense to this, but the truth is that things had tightened up down there. A strange man had just asked me to strip down and lie on a table, I couldn’t really blame my boys for trying to take refuge in the upper regions of my body. There was a bit of poking and prodding, which would normally fall under the category of “unpleasant” but the after the realization that the next time this guy would be in the vicinity of my crotch he would be cutting into it, I figured that this was as good as my balls were going to get during this adventure.

This doc uses a “no scalpel” technique, in which he performs the operation with a single punch through the scrotum. It sounded more like getting an ear pierced at the mall than sterilization. (Maybe I could get an Orange Julius afterward.) The literature I received described it as an “elegant way for the surgeon to perform the operation.” Although this conjured up images of top hats, monocles, classical music and caviar, somehow I doubted the actual procedure would be that civilized. The doc went on to tell me more details of the procedure, but to be honest once he started talking about incisions I lost my focus. To say I’m a wimp about this sort of stuff is completely underselling it.

Because of some of the comments in my first post, I was compelled to ask about the permanence and success rate for these things. The doc said that a vasectomy reversing itself is very rare and he’s only had one reversal in the 20 plus years he’s been practicing. So those of you who had “reversal babies” make up slightly more than 1% of all vasectomy procedures done. You guys should start playing the lottery.

Finally, I was given the option of local versus twilight anesthetic. The twilight option would knock me out and was described by the doctor as “fun" though fun is hardly a word I’d associate with any part of this endeavor. Because I’m a “real man” I opted for the local (also because I know that any anesthetic has risks and it seemed pointless to be knocked out for a 15 minute procedure). “In that case,” the doc said, “You’ll be able to drive yourself home.” This seemed odd to me since I had just signed 150 pages of paperwork promising that I would do no such thing.

And that was it. The consult was over in five minutes and I was now beyond the first, and only, obstacle that stood between me and the knife.

The surgery will be in a few weeks and the first pangs of nervousness are beginning to bubble up.

To be continued…

--DGB