Vasectomy

Today, I’m going in to my doctor’s office to get “the snip.” So, depending on when you’re reading this today, I’m either teetering on the edge of  insanity with anxiety about what’s about to happen, or I’m doped out of my mind with good narcotics, (hopefully enough that I don’t care what’s happening), or I’m lying in bed coming out of my stupor wondering what just happened.

I started looking into what all a vasectomy entails a few months ago, and decided several weeks ago to go ahead with it. I visited the doc for a consultation, and then made the appointment for after we got back from the Great Wolf Lodge.

Reading about the procedure, and talking with the doctor about it, it’s a quick and easy operation, (about 10 minutes actual work), with a relatively easy and quick recovery time. I really hadn’t thought much about it during the weeks after making the appointment. But this week, a few days before snip-day, the anxiety has really hit me right in the gut. (Actually it feels like a hit lower than my gut.) I’m a bit twitchy, and easier to aggravate. I have to keep my mind distracted to avoid thoughts going to that subject.

I’ll take some Valium half an hour before the appointment to take the edge off my nervousness, and I’ll get some local anesthetic right before the work begins, so supposedly I won’t feel or care much at all. Within 30 minutes, I’ll be heading home, (Wifegrit driving), to spend the weekend lying in bed watching TV. For a couple of days, I’ll have ice, (a bag of frozen peas has been suggested), chillin’ my boys to keep swelling down. Discomfort should be easily controlled with moderate meds. And I should be fine for going back to work on Monday. The incisions will be very small, (probably one stitch), and therefore, healing should be rapid.

I know all the above intellectually, and if the cutting and snipping and stitching was to be done on any other part of my body, I wouldn’t be squeamish. I had sinus surgery several years ago, and had no anxiety about it. I had no problem with a doctor cutting stuff up inside my skull, near my brain, but a tiny, little snip in my lower area is giving me the heebie-jeebies.

It probably didn’t help that I’ve looked at several pictures of vasectomy results. From all I’ve read and been told, the healed scars are minimal at worst, and virtually invisible at best. But seeing pictures of the wounds immediately after the procedure and for a few days after, they make me squirm and cross my legs. The idea that a doc is going to cut me there, and reach in with a tool to grab a tube, snip and tie it off, and then put it back in, well, it’s unnerving.

I should have had done this years ago. I have no doubt it’s a good thing, and in a few weeks I’ll be glad I had it done. But I wish it was in my past and not in my future [present].

Bullgrit