2008-11-29-Vasectomy

Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) requires that you have a group counseling session before you get a vasectomy. They only run them every 2 weeks so expect about 3 weeks before you can get to that. I booked my vasectomy at the same time as the group session and the earliest appointment was 4 weeks later.

The group session was mostly an opportunity for Q&A as well as allowing for a basic description of the procedure and what to expect afterwards. While they suggest that you might like to bring your partner to the counseling session, Elizabeth and I were the only couple there. Oddly, most of the other guys had teenage children. Why they suddenly decided to stop doing what they'd been doing so far and get a vasectomy, who knows.

What to do beforehand comes down to:

• Shave your testicles.
• Bring a pair of brief style underpants or athletic supporters to the operation.
• Organize for someone to drive you to and from the operation.
• Have ice packs at home.

As far as which way of doing a vasectomy goes, PAMF has doctors who do both and they've found that there's no difference between the recovery rates between styles. It seems to mostly come down to which system the doctor prefers and how practiced they are.

For the day of the operation it's fairly straight forward. You turn up, strip down and sit on a normal doctors table. First time as a male that I've had to use the stirrups. Procedure is simply:

• Cover your groin with betadine.
• Find the vas deferens on one side (fairly uncomfortable).
• Inject a local anesthetic into that side (actually painful).
• Incision.
• Tugging feeling while they pull out the vas and cut about a centimeter out of it.
• Slight burning smell as they cauterize both ends of the vas.
• More tugging while they sew up the incision.
• Do it again for the other side.

On a humorous side note, I saw a joke a couple of days after the vasectomy.

Macho (adj): Jogging home from your vasectomy.

Apart from the aforementioned points, there was no pain during the operation (just a light tugging feeling at a few points). Afterwards I was given a paper bag that had a sheet of instructions and 3 containers for semen samples and waddled off home.

After the operation, you'll need to apply ice fairly constantly and no sex or masturbation for a week. I recommend small reusable ice packs as there's nothing quite so annoying as spilling ice blocks onto your testicles. Expect to spend a day or so in discomfort but I at least didn't find much in the way of pain (I took the advice to stay mostly stationary for a couple of days and after that was pretty much fine).

You're not sterile until you've been tested as such (preferably at least twice) and my research found that it takes about 30 ejaculations to become sterile (most were saying 20-30, one guy seems to think exactly 24 is sufficient). Being a geek I logged it all and you can, if you're so inclined, fine a table at the bottom of this post.

PAMF asks you to bring in specimens at 4-6 weeks and then a second test 10-14 days after that. You'll need to take them in within 4 hours of collection, but there's toilets on site which I found to be a lot more convenient (no forgetting the timing or carrying it around longer than necessary where it can be exposed to heat or cold unnecessarily). Oddly, they seem to be afraid of the sample containers and insist on putting them in a brown paper bag (and then duplicating (sometimes incorrectly) the information on the medical sticker on the sample container onto the bag). Seems like a waste of paper to me and the desk staff couldn't give me a good reason for doing so. I got tests done as soon as I could arrange it after 30 ejaculations (and only 22 days post-op) and came back sterile (confirmed 10 days later).