Vasectomy Blues, by Tom Dinard

The happy-go-lucky nurse calls my name ten minutes early and says what I’m sure she says to every patient: “How’s it going?”

Maybe today she doesn’t quite realize the weight of her question. Or maybe she does. Maybe this procedure is so normal, so routine, that she figures any swinging dick who thinks any differently is a misinformed dolt. Well, I guess that makes me a misinformed dolt. Not necessarily a swinging dick.

“Oh, it’s great,” I say, rolling my eyes to the ceiling. “Never better.”

We’re walking to the back room where I will finally, three and a half years after the birth of my son, make it so I can’t produce another one. I told my wife it’s her birthday present.

Now the nurse figures it out. She remembers she works for a urologist and that she’s leading this patient to what he has — for weeks, months, and maybe even years — considered at the very least pain tantamount to one serious kick in the nuts, a possible gut-shot to the ego, guaranteed torture to some degree, and maybe even permanent emasculation.

“Oh, right,” she says, sensing the fears that mount with my every step toward the cutting table. “Highlight of your week, I’m sure.”

“Highlight of my life.”

***

I had done my reading.

The seven-page literary masterpiece known as “Consent For Vasectomy” had Bartlett’s-worthy quotations such as “The intent of this operation, known as bilateral partial vasectomy, is to render you sterile (i.e. unable to cause a pregnancy in a female partner). You should also understand that there is only a remote possibility of reversing the state of infertility once achieved.”

Or, my favorite: “You may expect some minor postoperative problems and occasionally some complications. The minor discomforts which frequently occur include (1) black and blue marks on the scrotum; (2) swelling beneath the incisions; (3) tenderness around the incision sites and testicles; (4) or a discharge from the edges of the skin incisions.”

I had done my shaving. Yes, my shaving.

My wife walked in on me applying my new Remington electric razor to the “upper scrotum, just under the penis onto the scrotal sac.” Shockingly, the electric razor worked like, well, an electric razor, so I went back to the trusty ol’ Gillette Mach 3, sans cream. My wife cringed. If only she knew.

“Bring a scrotal support (jock strap or suspensory, or tight jockey shorts),” it said for No. 3 under “Please Remember.” And No. 4: “If possible, bring someone who can drive you home.”

No thanks, I thought. The jewels and I can suffer together, alone.

I had done my sharing.

More for shock value than sympathy, I instant-messaged a co-worker Thursday afternoon, saying, “So, what are you doing tomorrow? I’m getting a vasectomy.”

He’s thirty years old, not anywhere close to conceiving of the concept of marriage, let alone a permanent — or even latex — form of birth control. So naturally he said, “Good for you, but I’ll never do that.”

I thought about informing him of all the “that” he would end up doing after he got married that he would have claimed he’d never do when he was a thirty-year-old bachelor scoring every other week courtesy of J-Date, but I didn’t feel like typing anymore. My stones were already bluing just from the thought of it.

***

“OK, Tom. Go ahead and take off everything below your shirt, take this sheet and put it over your lap, and have a seat on the table. The doctor will be right in.”

It’s a good thing I brought a book with me, I think, as I open to page 108 of The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer, a beautiful memoir of the author’s childhood without a father, and pick up with a scene in which the main character, a young boy, is with an older friend, camping by an Arizona roadside and roasting marshmallows.

And then I’m thinking of the imminent roasting of my own marshmallows, and then …

“Mr. Dinard. Are you ready?”

Oh, thank God. It’s the doctor.

Two things bother me. The first is the needle sticking into the right side of my sack, causing a slow burn of anesthesia followed by five seconds of what feels like everything in that general vicinity, plus most of my stomach, being flushed down one of those industrial-strength airport toilets.

The second is when the doctor tells me he’ll have to do the same thing to the left side after finishing up the right one.

OK, three things bother me. The third is the doctor handling my junk the whole time. Granted, I understand that these gropes are not fondles and these necessary movements and touches are about science and medicine, not about what’s probably happening in a fifty-cent theater booth somewhere on the edge of town. But still, I wonder, how does a man — or a woman, for that matter — spend eight or ten or twelve years working fourteen hours a day and into the middle of the night just to end up on twig-and-berry patrol?

In my weakened, numbed-loins state of mind, I surmise that entering the field of urology is akin to becoming a catcher in baseball: not too many people are brave enough to do it, so if you’re willing to put up with the foul balls, you’ll end up on the express train to the big leagues.

I deal with the needles.

I deal with the rotten smell and plume of smoke rising from the unseen site of the cauterization.

I deal with the doctor’s encyclopedic knowledge of 1980s women’s tennis when that becomes the only conversation between us that succeeds in lasting more than a minute.

And just like that, after one hour and eight minutes, it’s time to go, time to take my hobbled self back home, time to gird up for “two or three days” of soreness. After that, they assure me, I’ll live sterilely ever after.

“Oh, before you go, Tom, a few things,” the doctor says, and my eyes roll again, this time down to the floor, as he hands me one of those medical sample cups with a removable lid.

“After your twentieth ejaculation, get a sample in here and bring it back to see if everything worked.”

Or didn’t work, I thought.

“Of course,” I say. “That should take about three days.”

He doesn’t laugh.

“And here,” he adds, producing a small slip of paper from somewhere, I don’t know where, I don’t care where, but I assure you, dear reader, it had to be a wonderful place, could have been heaven, and at the very least was somewhere really shiny and pristine and quiet and wonderful and serene.

“Here’s a prescription for Vicodin.”

“Great,” I said, smiling for the first time all week.

“Never better.”

***

Go ahead, punks … make Tom Dinard’s day:

Past work on FlipCollective.com.
To follow him on Twitter.
To befriend him on Facebook.

Related Posts