Vasectomy Gone Wrong

After the birth of our third child, my wife and I decided three was enough.  It was time to take permanent steps to keep anymore of our spawn from over running the earth.  And draining our bank accounts.

So after a long and thoughtful talk on the pros and cons of both male and female contraceptive techniques... I was ordered to get a vasectomy.  To which I retorted with all my male bravado, ... "Yes dear".

Two weeks later I had an appointment with a doctor located via the local phone book.  And my thoughtful, loving, and all too cheerful for the occasion wife drove me to my doom.  I have to give her some credit.  She did offer to sit with me in the operating room.  But I really didn't want her there, witnessing the evisceration of my manhood.  So I thanked her, but said no and I'd see her shortly to wheel me back to the car and a weekend of frozen peas and ESPN.

I checked in with the receptionist and she directed me to the treatment room.  There she instructed me to strip down and lie on the patient table.  She said the nurse would then be in to shave me.

Yeah, down there.

I looked over at the nurse standing at the other end of the office thinking, "Please don't be hot.  Please don't be hot.  Please be a 50 year old, 300 pound German iceberg".  Nope, she was hot.  Crap.  Now on top of everything else, I had to worry about embarrassing reactions to too much handling in that sensitive area.

With fear, and now a little anxiety, I shuffled into the treatment room.  I shut the door, stripped down, laid on the table and awaited my fate.  A few minutes later, the nurse came in and shut the door behind her.  She introduced herself while she got out shaving gel and a straight razor.  She then walked over to the table holding the gel and razor in her hand.

Suddenly, I realized an embarrassing reaction was not going to be a problem.  The sight of the straight razor approaching my nether regions stopped that issue dead in its tracks.

The nurse got to work quickly and efficiently.  In a few minutes I was fully prepped and ready for the doctor.  She walked out to retrieve the physician.  Leaving me alone in the room.  For the first time I allowed myself to focus on something outside my impending pain and I looked around.

The 'operating' room, if you could call it that, was a small rectangle about 15x12 or so.  A patient table was in the center.  Where I was currently laying.  And several trays and working counters were around the outside.  The walls were bare except for a poster showing the male reproductive organs. Overall, very sterile, very white and I realized very cold.  I was starting to get the shivers.

Part of  the feeling of cold was the actual temp but part was no doubt due to an involuntary reaction the body experiences when injured or preparing for injury.  Several hundred thousand years of evolution have developed a survival reaction in humans.  If you become injured, or the lizard portion of your brain thinks you might get injured, your body triggers a response that pulls blood from your extremities into your core.  By pulling blood to the torso it helps your core, essential organs to survive extreme trauma.  But at a cost to your arms and legs.  One of those costs is the lack of blood in your limbs makes you feel cold.  It can also make you pass out if it drains too much blood from your brain.  That's why some people faint at the site of blood.  Also, the taller you are the more pronounced the effect.  Which is why tall people pass out more often at the site of blood.  Repeated exposure to the site of blood, or trauma, can help a person overcome and control the effect.

On an aside: I'm one of those people who faints, not at the site of blood, but from needles.  Usually needles drawing large quantities of my own blood (Ok, so maybe that qualifies as 'site of blood'). 

In the Navy, I once had to see the base flight surgeon who extracted what seemed like about a dozen one quart vials of my blood. I promptly passed out and hit the floor like a sack of wet potatoes.  They had to revive me with smelling salts.  The flight surgeon thought it was SO funny, that he called my Commanding Officer to regale him with the story.  The next day the CO and XO summoned me in to the CO's office to harangue me about it.  I never lived it down.

But back to my nether regions;

The doctor soon came in with the nurse and began prepping instruments for the operation.  The first part was a local anesthetic.  Administered via a veeery long needle and syringe. 

The doc reached down and hit me with the syringe.  Right in the left jewel.  Straight into the heart of my left jewel.

Holy crap did it hurt.

It felt like I'd been hit with a cattle prod directly in the jimmys.  Shooting about 50,000 volts of current through my body.  With a firehose's worth of wattage driving it.

My whole body arched up until the only parts touching the table were the back of my head and the heals of my feet.  After what seemed like an age but was probably only three or four seconds, he pulled the needle out.

My body collapsed back down on the table and my spirit came down off the ceiling and reentered my wilted body.  Whew, ok.  That's got to be the worst of it...pain killer is in.  Just a walk in the park from here out.

The doc put the syringe down and got out the scalpel.  He bent over and made the first incision on the left side.

AND I FELT IT.

The numb nuts mis-dosed me.  I wasn't anesthetized at all.

The scalpel went in and I let out a low grunt as a wave of pain rippled through my groin.  I could tell both he and the nurse realized their mistake immediately.  I saw the whites of both their eyes as they widened in surprise.  With a speed bordering on panic, they spun back to the tray table and began frantically prepping another syringe.

The doc then swung back over to me and without so much as a 'how do you do' hit me in the left testicle for the second time.  Needle in.  Body arcs up.  High voltage electricity rifles through me.  Needle out.  Collapse.

He then went back to the scalpel and widened the incision.  Very slowly.  While asking, "you alright?".

"Yeah, doc.  Just finish it up".

Things then proceeded somewhat normally.

He made the incision, got out a pair of scissors and made the appropriate cuts.  Another instrument to tie off the severed tubes.  He wrapped this up fairly quickly.  Put down the tie off instrument, and reached over to pick up the next tool.

Which looked suspiciously like a Radio Shack soldering iron.

He turned it on.  Heated up the business end then stuck it inside me.  After about 30 seconds or so, gray wispy tendrils of  smoke began to rise up.  About 10 seconds after that, I began to smell burnt flesh.  My own burnt flesh.

Now THAT is something you DON'T smell everyday.

A minute later he wrapped up and put down the Radio Shack soldering iron and sutured me up.  All told about 10 minutes from first incision to last suture. 

I made it.  Not bad.  Even with the screw up, I survived it relatively intact.  Now I can limp out of here and go home to my TV and comfort food.

Then the doc walked around to my RIGHT side..........ah, crap.

SEALs Take Two

This story is a follow up to the January 23, 2014 post, SEAL Tryouts.  The event I'm about to recount actually predates the previous post by about three years.

Before, I took my shot at making the Teams at Great Lakes, I had an earlier brush with joining the SEALs.  But not as a SEAL.  I'll explain...

I was two years into my tour with the Naval Security Group Detachment at Atsugi, Japan when a notice came in over the secure, message line.  It was from SEAL Command in Virginia Beach.  The SEALs were requesting two operators from the NSG to augment SEAL Teams in the field.  The idea was to attach/imbed an individual with our unit's unique talents directly into a squad of SEALs.  The operator would provide direct support for missions which took them close to countries that were, ah shall we say, less than friendly to the U.S.

[A short side story: The Naval Security Group is not the same thing as Naval Security.  Naval Security are the guys and gals that provide the physical security on the base.  We'd often get calls from people on base trying to fix traffic tickets.  For awhile the guys answering the phone would try to explain, hey that's not what we do.  But eventually we got tired of repeating ourselves over and over.  So whenever anyone called to fix a ticket, the routine response became, "Yah, no problem.  We'll take care of it."  Click]

The secure transmission went out to the NSG Aircrew Detachments.  The theory being Aircrew members would be fitter than their surface and sub-surface counterparts.  And therefore better able to keep up with the super-fit SEALs.

Our Senior Chief, 'Skip', the Command Operations Chief at Atsugi, called an all hands meeting at the SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented  Information Facility, also sometimes referred to as the SeCure Intelligence Facility).  With all hands present, he outlined the jist of the communique and asked for volunteers.

I raised my hand.  Along with several other of my shipmates.

Senior Chief made an on the spot call and picked myself and another Aircrewman.  The other volunteer/selectee was a junior petty officer with about a year under his belt at Atsugi.  A stocky blond kid (for the life of me I cannot remember his name) whose idea of fun was to load up a backpack with rocks, then run the five miles from the Atsugi Naval Air Facility over to Army Camp Zama, grab a quick bite, then run back.

For the next week or two, he and I started conditioning and honing up our professional skills.  Then Senior Chief called us in and told us the operation was off.  So what happened?

Apparently, in typical SEAL fashion, the SEAL High Command decided they needed our support and sent out the request.  ... Without asking or clearing it through anyone at the NSG Command.

The Admiral in charge of the Naval Security Group naturally got wind of the request and called over to Virginia Beach.  The word for word conversation has never been relayed to me directly but this is what I gathered...I'm going to take a little creative license at this point but the storyline is true to what was relayed to me.

Admiral NSG:  Ah Admiral, we've received word that you sent out a request for several of our
                         operators to be re-assigned to the SEALs.

Admiral SEAL:  Yes that's right, is there a problem?

Admiral NSG:  Well, a little communication would have been nice.  And yes we do have some
                          concerns about what your proposing with our sailors.  Our guys have a large
                          amount top-secret information stuffed into their brains.  If they were to be captured
                          it could cause serious damage to the country's national security.  We're not so sure
                          this is a good idea.

Admiral SEAL:   Not a problem Admiral.  We've already thought of that.  If it looks like
                          our guys are in danger of capture, a SEAL will shoot your man in the head
                          before that can happen.  We've got it all worked out.
                     

I KID YOU NOT!!! 


Shoot us in the head while we're not looking?  Wow.  I'm certain that if you'd ordered a SEAL to shoot another SEAL in the back of the head, he'd tell you where you could go.  And maybe punch your ticket for good measure.  But apparently we were expendable.

The Admirals' conversation turned rather frosty at that point and ended quite abruptly!  As did my assignment/selection.  ... needless to say, the SEALs did not get their way.

Post Script:
Another short SEAL vignette.

When I was training at Goodfellow Airforce Base in Texas, one of the guys a couple weeks ahead of me decided to take the SEAL PST entrance test.  A SEAL grader was coming through recruiting and was going to administer the test at the base.

The advanced student and my two roommates all decided to all go and give it a shot.  My roommates, Dave and Ed, were just going along for the fun of it and to encourage their buddy.  However, their buddy, the advanced student, was actively trying to get into the SEALs.

But Ed was a stud.  He was an East Coast kid whose hero was Bruce Lee.  He worshiped Bruce Lee.  And tried to live his life by Lee's code.  And one of Bruce Lee's codes was, "I forge my body in the fire of my will".

And Ed had a lot of will.

He ran marathons as warm ups.  Then after he was done running, he'd do hundreds of calisthenics.  He was also blessed with the body type where running didn't make him skinny.  It built him up.  He had legs like tree trunks and a total body fat of about 2%.

Ed wasn't a swimmer though.  But his conditioning was good enough to score him a passing grade on the swim portion.  After the swim, he blew the test away.  The SEAL grader came over to Ed with drool running down the side of his mouth.

He told Ed he'd put up the highest score (outside the swim) the grader had ever seen by a non SEAL.  He then started hard selling Ed on the Teams.  That's when Ed told him he was color blind.  The recruiter paused, then said.  "No problem".  You just can't go into explosives but you can still be in the Teams.

That's when Ed told him about his food allergy.  Ed had an allergy to certain nuts that was potentially fatal.

The SEAL grader walked over with drool on his mouth and walked away with tears in his eyes.

....Ed was my roommate for almost two months at Texas.  And he had some of the most unusual eating habits.  Habits that had nothing to do with his allergy.  He ate Gerber's Baby food out of the jar.

Because he liked it.

He drank Pepto Bismol straight out of the bottle like it was Pepsi.

Because he liked it.

And man could he eat.  Once, after a mid-shift training session on base, I watched him and Dave polish off two dinner entrees at Denny's (that's two entrees for each of them). After finishing their dinners they then ordered the entire dessert menu.  Yes, the ENTIRE dessert menu.

The waitress was staring at them like they were crazy and then sarcastically asked, "And what would you like to drink with that?"  Without a seconds pause, Ed answered, "A diet Pepsi".

Yah, a DIET Pepsi to wash down the entire dessert menu.

The waitress then gave him the "Ok, now I know your NUTS" stare, while her mouth hung open.

Ed shot back, "Hey, I like the taste of the Diet".

They ate it all too.