After the latest addition to his family, Christian Piatt decided it was time to retire “the fellas” and get a vasectomy.
Got some good news last night; the first printing of PregMANcy is finally in the warehouse. Thanks to everyone who pre-ordered for your patience. And for those who have yet to put in their order, what the hell are you waiting for?
In honor of the arrival of our newest bundle of joy, here’s one of my favorite chapters from the book. It’s a rather, um, personal look at my experience getting a vasectomy.
♦◊♦
I’m thrilled to have Zoe in our lives. All of my concerns about worry overwhelming love and minutiae superseding the bigger picture of family thankfully were unwarranted. I should have known the love would come. I’m so crazy about this little girl it’s stupid.
That said, there’s no way in hell I want another one.
Though I’m glad Amy was able to deliver naturally and that there were few to no complications, it leaves me with no way to avoid going under the knife myself.
Amy is done with the pill; that much is abundantly clear. And unless I want the current sex drought to linger into my retirement years, it’s incumbent upon me to do something about it. First, I checked with insurance to see what part of a vasectomy would be covered. Even though we have major medical policies with huge deductibles, I hoped that it would at least knock out a big chuck of the annual portion that fell to us, getting us closer to actually getting some benefits, but they don’t cover a penny. Guess they don’t really care how many kids we have since they also don’t offer maternity coverage. Every new addition to the family unit is just another insured on the policy, so why encourage responsible family planning?
The first place I called wasn’t even sure what they charged, which I thought was a little weird. It was almost like they wanted a peek in my wallet before they quoted me a price, pushing to set up a consult, for which they would naturally charge me. Scratch that one off the list.
I went through several others without luck, but finally got a referral from a friend. He sent me to Dr. F. who is close to seventy years old, and by his own count, has done more than two thousand of these procedures in his career. As I’m not a fan of offering up my genitals for trial runs, this sounded pretty good to me. Plus he charged nine hundred bucks, which—although it still seems outrageous for one short office visit and a thirty-minute in-office procedure—was the best deal I’d found.
Generally, a vasectomy isn’t the kind of thing you want to bargain-shop for, but given this guy’s experience and considering we’re paying out-of-pocket for the whole thing, price does play a role. And at $900 for a half-hour gig, it’s not like these are Walmart prices anyway.
The older Mattias gets, the more he overhears and absorbs. We can’t spell anything anymore without him decoding it. I speak occasionally in broken Spanish to Amy, but he’s learning that too. Most times I just give up and accept that he’s a part of the conversation.
“Why are you going to the doctor, dad?” he asked, playing the Wii while eavesdropping on our chat about my research.
“I have to have a doctor check out my guy parts.”
“Why?” he kept flicking away at the buttons on his remote.
“Because mom and dad are done making babies.”
“How come?”
“Do you want more brothers or sisters?” I asked.
“I dunno.”
“Well,” I said, “we’re pretty sure we don’t so I’m going to take care of it.”
“How do you do that?” he stopped and turned toward me. Clearly he wasn’t going to be satisfied with generalities. He knew, more or less, how babies were made, but this whole how-to-stop-making-babies was new information.
“The doctor helps the sperm stay inside my body so they can’t fertilize any of mommy’s eggs,” I said, continuing to take baby steps toward the truth while trying to spare him the gruesome details.
“You can stop them?” he asked. “How?”
Fine, I thought, he wants to know, I’ll tell him.
“The doctor goes in with a knife and cuts my testicle sack open, pulls out the little tubes that connect the testicles to my penis, cuts them in half, and burns the ends with a little iron so the sperm are stuck in there for good.” The boy’s eyes looked like they might keep growing until they completely engulfed his entire head.
“You might bleed,” he whispered in awe.
“Yeah, a little bit,” I said.
“Maybe you’ll die.” He said, worry gnarling up his young face.
“I know it sounds really gross,” I said, “but it’s not that big of a deal. They do it all right there in the doc’s office, and I can even drive myself home after.”
“I don’t want anyone cutting on my testicles,” he said, stepping back away from me as if I was the one with the scalpel.
“Join the club, dude.”
I remember the first time I drove a car. I was so excited and paranoid at the same time that I could hardly think. Over time though, it’s become pretty much second nature. It’s not until I have a kid in the car to ask a thousand questions about how it’s done that I realize there’s actually quite a lot to it.
I like to think that Dr. F’s cavalier approach to vasectomies is kind of like the way I approach driving. The guy’s sliced four thousand vas deferens in his career—though there was one dude with three vas deferens—so let’s say four thousand and one. But for me, they’re the only two I’ve got, so I’m a little bit concerned about how it all goes down. I suppose the conversation we had during the consult was supposed to reduce my anxiety, but it actually had the opposite effect.
“You hear all kinds of stories from other guys,” said the doctor, rolling back and forth on his backless chair. “I don’t really know why guys like to pass along these overdone horror stories, but they do.”
Really? What horror stories? I thought. But I just nodded as if I knew what he meant.
“Despite what you hear, you do not experience impotence or a reduction in sex drive afterwards.”
Whew, that’s a relief.
“You won’t experience phantom pain in your scrotum for years following the procedure.”
Hell, I’d hope not.
“And your testicles will not swell up like melons.”
Now what is this guy talking about? How do stories like that even get started? Maybe some guy, somewhere does have balls the size of cantaloupes? Maybe it’s rare, but who would just make something like that up?
“The myths about increased cholesterol, heart problems, and other metabolic issues related to a vasectomy are really just myth.”
Now I was getting a little worried. None of this stuff had even occurred to me before I came into this guy’s office. Now he had my head filled with all kinds of horrifying images.
“You can even go back to normal sexual activity the following day, provided you’re up for it,” he said. “Just no Olympic-style mounts and dismounts for at least a week.”
Does “normal sexual activity” generally constitute mounts and dismounts? Did I miss a memo? I mean, I made two babies so I know I’m doing something right, but I have no leotards, no hand chalk, and certainly no scorecards around when this kind of thing takes place.
“Now it’s important to keep in mind,” he warned, “that you may still be fertile for some time after the operation…”
Sounds like the opposite effect I’m going for, doc.
“So you’ll want to perform a minimum of fifteen ejaculations alone or with protection before we check to make sure all your little swimmers are out of commission. I’ll give you a jar to take home after the operation that you can use to bring a sample back to the lab for us to check out once you get to fifteen.”
“You have to get the sample here pretty quickly after you produce it though, because those little buggers start to liquefy in about an hour or so.”
No pressure there. Just goo in a cup, then race across town to let a team of strangers dig around in it, making sure you don’t stop for coffee along the way.
“Sounds good,” I lied, and walked back to my car wondering why I was talking about paying 900 bucks for a guy to hack away at my nuts.
I had to pay up front, in cash: no checks, no credit cards. Bills only. I felt a little like a Mafioso, coming in the morning of the deed and plopping an envelope full of hundreds on the counter. I might have made some joke to that effect, but I was too busy thinking about the procedure.
They called me back, had me strip from the waist-down, and “cover” myself with a giant napkin that was supposed to lend some sense of privacy.
“By the way,” the nurse said, “that’s one way glass, so no one can see in. But if you’d feel more comfortable, we can close the blinds.”
“If someone can actually see in here and has the stomach to watch,” I said, “they get what they deserve.” She left me alone, my bare ass sliding down the sloped table covered with wax butcher paper. The bench was just long enough to support me to about my knees, and the raised back combined with sitting on wax paper made for an awkward situation. I tried to kind of pucker up my butt to grab hold of anything I could, but the only solution was putting my feet up on the corners, which stuck my bare ass straight out toward the door.
Then I waited. I know it was only ten minutes or so in human time, but my balls were sure it was an eternity.
You can still back out, they said to me. I’m sure they’ll give you your money back.
I can’t, balls. I promised Amy I’d do this.
But what did we ever do to you—aside from give you two great kids, which is what you wanted, right?
Yeah, thanks for that. But consider yourself retired.
What about condoms?
No chance, said the penis.
The doc finally came in, and I wasn’t sure he remembered what he was there for. I expected him to be in scrubs or to at least have on a mask or something. But he was dressed more like he was headed to a business meeting. He even had his wristwatch on. It’s not like I expected him to lose it inside my scrotum or anything, but it seemed an awfully casual approach to an event over which I had lost no few hours of sleep.
“I’m going to shave your scrotum before we start,” he said, grabbing disposable razor from the tray next to him. “If I sewed a pubic hair up in your incision, you’d know, pronto.”
“I would think so,” I said, as he scraped at my sack with the razor. I was oddly impressed with how dexterous the guy was with a blade. I mean, it was a full-on dry shave, but he didn’t knick the skin or anything. If you’re going to have a guy fiddle with your hardware, better one who knows what he’s doing, I say.
“Now we’ll numb the area with Novocain,” he grabbed a syringe. By then I had accepted that this guy was old-school enough that he was not likely to offer me a Valium or anything to calm me down, but now he had a needle in his hand and had yet to do anything to numb the particularly sensitive area he had in mind to poke with it.
Oh, hell no, said my nuts and started a full-on retreat.
And as you might expect, getting poked in the testicles several times with a needle is not the most comfortable sensation you can imagine. Thankfully, Novocain is fast-acting, so the sting went away within thirty seconds or so. In the meantime though, I had to hold tight to the sides of the table so I would not give into my reflexive impulse to whack him across the back of the head.
I guess everything relaxed down there after that because the left side went fast and pretty easy. I could feel some tugging up in my abdomen, but there was nothing I would consider to be overly painful. After about ten minutes or so, I had even gotten used to having a dude fondling my goodies, especially now that I couldn’t feel it.
The right side was not so cooperative. It turns out, as the doctor later explained as he peeled me off the ceiling, that the second side often pulls back, to the point that the testicle is up inside the body when it gets wind of what’s happening to its little buddy. This means that he’s got to reach way up in there and do some pretty serious tugging to get at what he needs. Apparently, as I also learned, there are some nerves further up in there that don’t benefit from the local anesthetic applied to the scrotum.
“Wow,” I said, trying not to close my knees against his temples. “That was, um, unexpected.”
“Sorry about that,” he picked up his cauterizing gun. “Sometimes the second one’s a little more stubborn. Tries to run and hide on you.”
Oh, and in case you were curious, the smell of burning vas deferens is not particularly pleasant. I was hoping I’d be able to report something glibber about it smelling like chicken, but no deal. It smelled about how I thought burning balls might smell.
Before sewing me up, he left me with one final parting gift by grazing me with the cauterizing gun.
“Hey!” I squawked, “I think you burned me there.”
“Hmm, yeah. A little bit there,” he said nonchalantly. This is probably less than shocking, but there is nothing minor about any incident wherein your scrotum is burned with a hot iron. Maybe he thought it would be numb so he had some room for error.
Not so much.
He gave me a giant ice pack and a three-inch thick pad of gauze to stick in my shorts. He called it a “shock absorber.”
“Make sure not to let your little ones hop on your lap for a few days,” he said, handing me the container for my soon-to-be-spermless sample. “Take some Tylenol if it starts to hurt and try to stay off your feet for about twelve hours.”
Three days later, things are starting to look much more normal down there. Mattias has been very curious about my progress and he understands that a leap on the lap will be cause for immediate grounding. I’m back to being able to pick up Zoe, which is nice, and I can help with most of my basic duties around the house.
As for the whole sex-the-next-day thing, that didn’t happen.
I have to admit that the long-term prospect of pressure-free intimacy for the rest of my life feels pretty good, and I’m glad to take my share of the responsibility for our family planning. I just hope some day that my boys will find it in their little hearts to forgive me. It’s been a good run, fellas, but your work here is officially done.
Photo credit: Flickr / Pink Sherbet Photography
I think any such procedure should be primarily because of that person’s individual goals in life. You shouldn’t have any such procedure done just to please someone else. If you do, then you have to admit to yourself that it’s still your choice, and you have to admit you’re ultimately doing it for your own reasons anyway. (For example, to improve your sex life, to make your marriage more bearable for you, etc.) You have to weigh the pros and cons for yourself. I would get one mostly for my own reasons. I don’t want to have children, either with… Read more »
Just read it again.
Fifteen ejaculations, eh?
Her: “What are you doing in there with the door locked?”
Him: “Nothing dear, just following the doctor’s orders.”
The cost of the procedure is probably influenced by market forces, for example, the cost of the vasectomy relative to the cost of an alternative, like HAVING A KID. Compare the $900 with the costs of having another child, and the choice should be pretty easy. The urologist has you over a barrel, in a way. Anything they charge, anything less than the hundreds of thousands of dollars it takes to raise a kid to age 18, is a bargain….
Two funny things happened when I had my, eh, “procedure.” I was laying there on the table with the gown open and everything displayed for all to see, and the nurses started wiping the area down. The doc said, “We’re just creating a sterile area.” I said, “Isn’t that the whole point of this?” Crickets. Then there was a song on the radio, that old 80s ballad, “I just died in your arms tonight.” OK, weird. But they were talking amongst themselves trying to figure out who was singing the song. It was just as the doc was going to… Read more »
Tough crowd, man.
Question is, do you want people performing your vasectomy to have a wonderful sense of humor, or no sense of humor? Having no sense of humor might be better….. : – )
“I don’t think I’d like to be on the 40/30-somethings dating market while permanently sterilized. That seems kind of rough.”
Try to be in the mid-30 dating market as a female (or male, I don’t think it matters much) and not wanting to have any children. That comes close to being sterilized. The only thing is that if you are not sterilized potential partners (male & female) somehow think they can still reverse your decision.
“But if that’s a no-go, what on earth is wrong with good old condoms?”
That is something I wonder about, too.
Another point in favor of female sterilization (or at least IUD), is that women become steadily more infertile leading up to about 38-40. A woman who elects to be sterilized only forfeits a couple of years of her reproductive power. Her same-aged husband, however, forgoes decades of that ability. In the event of a breakup or death of a spouse, it is asking much more of the husband to take the plunge. It is sickening to read female blogs that chronicle the author’s husband choosing a vasectomy, only to read the excitement these women display, boasting how he will soon… Read more »
I applaud any man who takes responsibility in his relationship for the contraceptive issue, instead of coercing his wife into hormonal contraception, or getting an IUD so he can have a free ride. It boggles my mind that a vasectomy is not a standard medical procedure offered by urologists. This is something that should be available in all bigger hospitals. Complications, like those mentioned by Sceptical, arise when a surgeon has little experience or is not trained properly to perform the procedure. If more men requested the procedure, it would also contribute to more doctors becoming competent at performing safe… Read more »
I just cannot how understand how permanent sterilization makes any sense for any man or woman under the age of 45/55. Let’s say your partner dies tomorrow in a car smash, and while you are devastated you eventually remarry after a couple of years. And your new partner would like a child. Oops. Or you get divorced after some brutally shocking, unexpected revelation (more likely). I don’t think I’d like to be on the 40/30-somethings dating market while permanently sterilized. That seems kind of rough. Hormonal contraception can often have some really ugly side-effects, but this much rarer in the… Read more »
Amen Wilhelmina.
I’m going to have permanent health problems from my surgical births, and to have more surgery would make it worse.There are more side effects for a woman having her tubes tied than a man.It’s also common for women who’ve had heavy bleeding with their periods, to find it becomes much worse to the point of then needing a hysterectomy.
It should be a private decision between the couple and not a public debate really.But kudos to any man who’ll support his wife and share responsibility (and the pain)
I agree with Wilhelmina. The pill and other female contraceptive equipment messes up your hormones and possibly your body for a long time and I do find it selfish that men say they wouldn’t think of taking the male pill (it is currently being developed) and whine about wearing a condom when women have to endure an imbalance of hormones that affects their health in some ways just because men are too lazy. If you don’t want to get a vasectomy, if you don’t want to take the male version of the pill, stock up on condoms and never ever… Read more »
I had one after our second and definitely last child turned one. I was 42 at the time and I can assure you there was no way we were having a third (I’m told old for more of that s**t). I have had none of the problems that Skeptical alluded to and frankly it was the best thing I ever did. I am aware of quite a few men who have had the procedure and none appear to regret it either. Unlike Christian, I went in for a general anaesthetic so had none of the pain problems that he had.… Read more »
Oh god, why? This is permanent! Permanent. I do not understand for the life of me any form of permanent contraception, be it male or female. Isn’t that just tempting fate? Condoms are fine, and while IUD’s can be slightly unpleasant to put in they have next to no side-effects unless the woman in question has very heavy periods. Most importantly, they are freakin reversible, being pretty easy to remove. I understand they make mid-life divorces a much less attractive proposition, but I don’t think that’s really worth it, and if that’s the reason why you’re getting one, there’s probably… Read more »
The fact that the doctor charged cash only and minimized the sometimes terrible and permanent side effects of the procedure is troubling. About 3-5% of the men who have undergone a vasectomy experience life-altering changes, such as debilitating pain, “blowouts”, infections, a reduction to erection potence and sensitivity. Many men report their once-strong orgasm is now a “dribble” and the wonderful rush of orgasm is diminished. Another 10% of men regret the decision, and suffer less serious but persistent problems that arise from their vasectomy. The odds appear to be that 1 in 6 men regret their choice to have… Read more »
There is also the emotional impact of male vs. female sterilization. Almost no late-thirties husbands that I know catch baby fever as they approach 40. However, countless wives become desperate to have a last (or first!) child before their fertility runs dry. If the husband was recently sterilized, that is a combustable situation. If the wife was sterilized, then she is forced to confront this issue herself, and the marriage will probably not implode. Picture the couple, where the husband has recently undergone vasectomy. The wife begins to yearn for another baby to complete their perfect family, but her husband… Read more »
Wow. I’m never getting that done. I don’t really have a problem with other men making this choice – so long as it’s really their choice. But there are no shortage of women – and there’s a real dark undercurrent among some feminists – who think that any man who’s unwilling to make this choice is ‘immature’ and unwilling to take reproductive responsibility. You see it a lot – where it’s just taken for granted that men should be willing to get surgery because it’s just too hard for them to take a pill. It’s like all that rhetoric about… Read more »
Response was actually to the author, sorry Soullite.
Ah, and ESSURE does not require general anesthesia. But I imagine it’s not a comfortable procedure, getting tubes up the vaginal canal, past the cervix and into the fallopians. Nothin’s easy in this world!
The Essure insertion really is not comfortable. Also for something like 1 in 6 cases, one or both inserts must be repeated within the first few months as they can fail to set properly. The followup period to Esssure to confirm infertility is similar to vasectomy, according to the literature. Although the 2 procedures are fairly similar in pros and cons, from my biased perspective the ego hit is harder to swallow for the husband (diminished manhood, inability to perform at a sexual level as before). Also, the passive female system (1 egg per month) is easier to tame than… Read more »
“Although the 2 procedures are fairly similar in pros and cons, from my biased perspective the ego hit is harder to swallow for the husband (diminished manhood, inability to perform at a sexual level as before).”
Who says the female ego is not hit hard when a woman has a sterilization? After all women are from early age told that the sole purpose of our existence is to procreate. As a women who is sterilized or had a hysterectomy one can also be on the receiving end of kind comments like ‘now you’re not a real woman anymore’.
Wilhelmina de Jong says: “Who says the female ego is not hit hard when a woman has a sterilization? After all women are from early age told that the sole purpose of our existence is to procreate. As a women who is sterilized or had a hysterectomy one can also be on the receiving end of kind comments like ‘now you’re not a real woman anymore’.” Most of my friends and peers are heterosexual 30-something couples with 2 or 3 children. The wives, at this point, have accomplished their hard-wired objective of fashioning a stable home and filling it with their… Read more »
There must be something to that whole “selfish” DNA thing about men trying to reproduce as widely as possible. Yet, this is not necessarily evident in the actual sex and actual fantasies that men have. Consider all the porn scenarios and all the fantasies men have about women, and notice how many of those scenarios simply cannot result in pregnancy. (Faces, mouths, chests, and anuses are just not where pregnancy happens.) If men are just engines of reproduction, we would have absolutely no interest in anything except vaginal intercourse. Men may be “driven to spread their seed,” but it’s very… Read more »
“You see it a lot – where it’s just taken for granted that men should be willing to get surgery because it’s just too hard for them to take a pill. It’s like all that rhetoric about ‘choice’ just goes out the window when it comes to men, and they feel no shame in pressuring their partners to get sterilized.” Well, there are also plenty of men who have no shame in pressuring their wives or girl-friends into taking the pill, inserting an IUD or whatever without minding that the health and well-being of their partner will be affected. There… Read more »
Skeptical,
Can you offer any citations or sources for the statistics you’re quoting? As a man considering this procedure, I appreciate all the information I can get. Thanks.
Mr. Piatt:
Enjoyed your writing very much.
Also, they’d have to give me major tranquilizers before I’d let anyone near my daddy bits with a sharp object.
Thanks for the laughs and for bringing back some memories. You have now earned the right to scare the begeezes out of your friends who are undergoing the knife. I particularly enjoying telling the melon fable.