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

Closing the Baby Shop, Part 3

Click here for Part 1

Click here for Part 2

The dreams started about a week before I was scheduled to have the procedure. Clearly, my subconscious was concerned about the vasectomy. In one dream, I sat in the waiting room indefinitely, thumbing over and over again through the only magazine they had—a dog-eared copy of Highlights for Children. In another, I had forgotten to wear sweatpants and briefs, as I had been instructed, and was forced to walk around pant-less, until WonderWife™ could bring me the garments. In the strangest one, Stephen Colbert was my doctor. His cocky attitude did not make for a great bedside manor.

During my consultation, I had been instructed to shave the night before the surgery. This was a surprise. I had listened to many anecdotes about vasectomies and none of them included self-shaving. Nonetheless, I arrived home from work that night and headed into the bathroom, armed with determination, electric clippers and my Gillette Fusion.

I had not been given specific shaving instructions and as I stood in the bathroom, pants around my ankles, I realized that I had no idea what area they wanted shaved. It’s not like there’s any resource for this. I certainly wasn’t going to Google “male scrotum shave”. So I decided that the best thing to do was to get rid of it all.

Admittedly, I had been rather lax about my manscaping over the past few months, so things were more unkempt down there than usual. Shaving myself was a perilous process that took a lot of time, nearly half a can of shaving cream and two blades. At first I worried about cutting myself, but soon realized that was a ridiculous notion. No small nick would compare with punishment that my boys were going to face the next day.

I finished up, toweled myself off and called out to WonderWife™, who was kind enough to preserve my dignity by giving me privacy during this ordeal. Though I’m sure she was giddy with curiosity to see the result. She raced in and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh. My poor balls looked pathetic and bare, like a naked mole rat. My boys hadn't looked like this since I was 11.

One of the major complaints guys have about vasectomies is that they diminish one’s manhood. I was beginning to see why. I was not looking forward to how it was going to feel when things down there started to grow back.

"There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum...it's breathtaking." - Dr. Evil

To be continued...

-DGB

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

Closing the Baby Shop, Part 1

I have decided to close up the baby-making shop for good. That’s right, I’m getting a vasectomy. Every man reading this right now is wincing. For guys, there is hardly a subject that comes with as many polarizing opinions as this one. There are guys I know who are so squeamish about vasectomies that they cannot physically be in the same room with people who are talking about them. Others see the ol’ snip snip as cutting off their manhood, as if taking away the ability to procreate strips him of his vitality. To those guys I say, “man up.” It takes balls to willingly allow somebody with a sharp object access to your junk. And yes, the pun is intended. Of course I’m not saying that every guy should get snipped or should have to. But I don’t understand those who are simply too afraid to have the procedure.

I’m getting a vasectomy because I have two kids and I am 100% certain that I don’t want any more. I’m getting one because using birth control sucks. I’m getting one because when it comes to making a kid, women get the raw end of the deal. Pregnancy floods them with hormones and stretches their bodies out, and this is before they actually squeeze the kid through one of the smaller openings in their bodies. I’m guessing there isn’t a guy alive who’s witnessed pregnancy and birth and hasn’t said, “Thank Jeebus I don’t have to do that.” So I figure that getting cut is the very least I can do. (Actually, the very least I can do is nothing, but then I’m back to dealing with birth control.) Lastly, I’m getting a vasectomy so sex can once again be a spontaneous thing.

It’s important for you to know that my getting a vasectomy is completely my decision. Soon after my first was born, I approached WonderWife™ with my plan. Needless to say, I didn’t have to do very much convincing for her to be on board. She happily agreed after I uttered the syllable “vas”.

Right now, I am confident in this decision. I’m focused on the end result and not on the surgical road that I’ll need to travel to get there. I’m sure as the surgery draws closer, so will my apprehension. I’ve done some reading on the subject, but as far as I know, I am the first amongst my friends to willingly put my boys in harm’s way.

So faithful readers, I have decided to literally let it all hang out for you. Over the coming weeks, I will chronicle the process in order to demystify, and most likely horrify, what is arguably the most fear-inducing elective surgeries a guy can face.

My consultation is next week.

To be continued….

-DGB