Closing the Baby Shop, Part 4

I woke up the morning of the surgery, put on my tighty whiteys and sweatpants as instructed, and headed out into the frosty morning to get neutered. At the doctor’s office, I was outfitted in the classic open backed surgery gown and a pair of blue socks that had puffy paint treads on the bottom, similar to what can be found on the soles of the socks of my infant daughter. I was led to the operating room and left to wait, bare assed, blue bootied, shorn and nervous. Sitting next to me was a tray of shiny, sharp instruments, which I had been sternly warned by the nurse not to touch. As if I wanted to get up close and personal with the instruments of torture that were going to be used to slice open my anatomy.

I sat there for a while.

As the wise poet Tom Petty once said, the waiting is the hardest part. After nearly 20 minutes of solitude, the doc came in and asked me how I was doing.

“Have you ever had surgery before?” He asked in an all too chipper of a tone.

“Only above the neck,” I told him.

I was prepped, which consisted of the nurse reclining the table and ladling a brown liquid all over my crotch, and the party began. As he stood over my genitals, the doc made another crack about it being cold. I wanted to punch him in the back of the head. First off, it was cold. The nurse had even given me a blanket while I did my time in solitude before the surgery. Second, now was not the time to be insulting my manhood. My balls had pretty much figured out what was to come when their protective layer of hair was removed the previous evening. Everything had been shriveled down there for the past 12 hours. Third, you used that joke already during the consult. Time to get some new material.

I closed my eyes, plugged in my earbuds and the procedure began.

After all of the stories I had heard, the warnings from friends and the all of the nervousness leading up to the surgery, I can honestly say that the vasectomy wasn’t that bad. The worst pain endured was during the Novocaine injection, which felt exactly like what it was—a big needle being stuck into my scrotum. A shooting pain traveled from my left testicle to somewhere just above my crotch, like an electrical shock had overtaken one of my nerves. But this pain was fleeting and after it subsided I honestly couldn’t feel anything. The problem then became psychological. Even though you can’t feel it, you know what’s being done down there and no matter what, you cannot get that out of your head. I started to hyperventilate and I could feel my body temp rise. I flashed back to that Lamaze class that WonderWife™ and I had to sit through before the Bean was born. They said to breathe. I did and was amazed to learn that the stuff actually worked. In retrospect, WW™ probably should have used it during the births of our two children. However, as a result of the breathing, my throat got dry and I wanted to cough more than anything in the world. But I dared not for a single cough would cause the lower half of my body to shake. The same lower half that currently had some of its insides on the outside.

The procedure was soon over and as the table was raised, I was given a Dixie cup of the most delicious cold tap water I’ve ever had. The nurses slid a jock strap over my legs and around my waist in the exact same way that I put on the Bean’s underwear in the morning. I stood up adorned in the jock-strap (or, in the words of my take-home literature, my “scrotal support”), which accentuated the ass-less gown/bootie ensemble perfectly. Ladies, I was looking hot. They gave me two specimen cups, for my follow up visits, in a bag labeled “biohazard” and sent me on my way. A half-hour later I was in bed with a bag of frozen corn on my balls, eating a delicious peanut butter and jelly square that WonderWife™ had made for the occasion. (Have I mentioned how totally awesome that woman is?)

I would have gone to work the next day, except that I was inadvertently all fucked up on narcotics. After the procedure, the doc asked me if I wanted pain medication. The answer was a no brainier, “Yes.” I took the pill, Ultram, the afternoon after the surgery and felt fine until the next morning, when in the shower I realized that I felt both drunk and hung over at the same time. There was no way I was going to operate a motor vehicle or subject myself to the scrutiny of my colleagues and boss.

The day after that, however, I was amazed how much the pain had receded from my balls. I went back to work and only my boss knew of the real reason I had missed two days of work.

So that was it. I’ve been snipped. And it was much less of a big deal than I had imagined. I told a friend of mine about the surgery and he turned pale saying, “I feel like I’m chewing on tin foil.” But really fellas, we shouldn’t be melodramatic about this whole thing. Women have it so much worse.

Happily, it’s all over for me. After I clean out my system, I will hopefully be given the all clear from the doc and then I will be able to officially turn the sign on the front of the baby shop from “open” to “closed”.

Click here for parts 1, 2 and 3.

-DGB