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.