Rob’s experience: Post-vasectomy wrap up. No problems.

After finding personal stories here and elsewhere most helpful, now that I’ve just had a vasectomy (5 days ago) I just wanted to report how it went.

For me, everything has gone smoothly, with only a bit of discomfort, and everything is working well. Last Thursday morning I had the procedure, and I checked in at 7:30 and was checked out by 10:30 feeling fine if a bit uncomfortable. It is now hard for me to believe that I agonized about this decision for over ten months, really not a big deal for me (feeling rather lucky).

The decision was not too big a deal. My wife and I do not want more kids, and she has had a variety of complications with other kinds of birth control we’ve used including an IUD that “went missing”. Also after having given birth twice, I feel quite certain that she has done her bit, and it was time for me to step up. Further, there are a lot of beautiful children in the world that could stand to be taken care of if we decide we want to raise more kids.
Clearly, the decision wasn’t that easy or it would not have taken me ten months to do it. I was afraid that something akin to the horror stories I’ve read on-line might happen, or that my sexual “chee” would be misplaced, or it just wouldn’t work anymore, etc. From what I understand only about 5% to 20% (depending on the website) of men have some kind of complication, and only one in about 1000 have chronic complications, and about 1 in 50,000 dies (I imagine that is usually related to anesthetic). Anyway, perhaps it should not be surprising that I and the three other fellows that did it that day experienced no complications just like 80 to 95% of men who have it done. None-the-less all four of us were grinning with true relief at the follow-up visits the next morning.

The procedure

I had an excellent surgeon, and theater staff who for the half-hour I was under their care kept me well distracted from what was going on (I had a local). The kind woman who kept talking about all manner of things was most helpful, and I cannot recall ever having been so relieved to hear what someone had packed for lunch. I imagine having that distraction and allowing it to work helped me to relax which made everything go easier.

The level of discomfort was less than I had anticipated; in all honesty, I think I’ve had more painful immunizations. At times there certainly was some discomfort, something on the order of having your testicle gently squeezed. I’ve been through other surgeries and this one was by far the easiest and least painful (again perhaps I just got lucky this time) but if we were to put pain on a scale from one to ten with ten being most excruciating:

• My vasectomy including post-op discomfort = 2
• Wisdom teeth (with a local but including post-op) = 6
• Ingrown toenail surgery (with local including post-op) = 6
• A huge accident with broken knee cap – and road rash (including the seeming iodine soaked wire brush used to scrape out the road rash) = 10 (I passed out for that one)
• Immunizations = 1 with the occasional 2 (where your arm goes sore for a couple of days).

By 9:15 it was over, I was rolled down to recovery and after 45 minutes where I enjoyed a bit of breakfast, I was sent to the waiting room. When my wife and kids picked me up an hour later, I was timid about the idea of sitting down, but there was no real discomfort, and I picked the kids up and went home to be pampered for a day (not sure I needed it, but one must enjoy these kinds of days when they come).

Recovery

Now it is day five, there was just one incision about 1.5 cm long that is healing easily without discomfort. A small band of discoloration has appeared across my testicles (looks like a bruise and I’m not sure when it appeared as I haven’t been checking it out much – it just hasn’t been bothering me that much). In the days since the surgery, the discomfort has been intermittent. Every now and then I sit a certain way or walk some way, and I get what feels like a gentle tug on my right testicle. Not enough to cause pain, but enough to feel like sometimes something is going on in my stomach as well. I’ve been going in boxers, and I’ll try to see if wearing some tighter undies for a while cuts down on the occasional tinges. Otherwise, no swelling, no bleeding or infection, no discomfort while I pee or during ejaculations (three so far, and all systems are working fine).

I certainly could have used tighter briefs during that first five days, when I switched (thanks mainly to the reminder to try it here), the twinges went away almost entirely. A couple of times a day I need to make an adjustment, but otherwise, I don’t notice anything. Yesterday, after two and a half weeks I tried going back to the boxers. Too SOON! No big deal but still noticeably uncomfortable at times so looks like I’ll be sticking with the tight undies for another week or so. The twinges I get now are not painful at all, just uncomfortable at times so things are steadily improving. Otherwise, the slight bruising is gone, and sex is as good as ever.

Given what some men have gone through I feel very fortunate, but after hanging out with some other men who have had this done I think my kind of experience with vasectomy is fairly common (80% to 95%).

Thanks to all who posted here, somehow I found the personal stories more helpful than the “fact sheets”. I’m certainly happy to have this report passed on. I think it is great to put personal stories out there, and the internet seems to be a good place for the kind of thing that most of us men don’t tend to talk about to each other.

Submitted by Rob