A Sept. 27 Health article incorrectly said that recanalization involves the return of sterility after a vasectomy. Recanalization involves the accidental return of fertility after the procedure.
| Page 4 of 5 < > |
Snip and Tuck
Vasectomy illustration
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
"Did you see all those men in the waiting room wearing sweat pants with their legs crossed?" she asked me as she prepared my propofol drip. (Propofol is the drug of choice for short periods of unconsciousness and rapid awakening -- better even than beer.)
"That's why they're here. We do about 20 vasectomies every Friday. The guys like Fridays because they can take the weekend off."
One of the few things you are not allowed to do in the days after your procedure is lift anything heavier than 15 pounds or otherwise exert yourself -- a perfect setup for weekend goldbricking. Even better, one thing you are allowed to do a week after your procedure is have sex, as much as you want, as long as you are comfortable (and provided you don't lift anything heavier than 15 pounds). Any sooner than a week, Laurent says, could cause a blowout; although that's rare, it does happen sometimes. Ejaculations speed up the clearing of recalcitrant sperm from the system.
Besides the propofol, Sparks topped off my intravenous cocktail with 50 micrograms of phentanyl to kill pain, and two milligrams of midazolam, a very wonderful head-spinning hypnotic sedative that relieves preoperative anxiety and causes operating room amnesia. I especially liked the idea of operating room amnesia.
"Is this the part where I count down from 10?" I asked as she administered the elixir just before wheeling me into the OR.
"You can try," Sparks said. I got to "nine," and then it was whee whee whoa, who turned off the room?
While I was dreaming about fish and bananas, Laurent was a busy man, as I later learned. He shaved away a few tufts of pubic hair and made a tiny incision on the top of my scrotum. He pulled out the vas deferens, which looks like a thick strand of spaghetti. He cut away a small section, then cauterized the ends. Which is to say, he burned them shut with a hot iron.
That done, he pushed the spaghetti back inside and moved on to the other side. When that bit was snipped and sealed, he closed the incisions with a few small stitches.
For him, 20 minutes, tops. Hey, where are the golf clubs?
Vasectomy Joke No. 3: A man pulls up at the clinic, leaving his wife and kids in the car, and races inside. "We're leaving on vacation, and my wife says I need to be vasectomised immediately!" The doctor is surprised, but makes the guy happy. Snip, snip and it's done. So the guy shuffles back to the car and gingerly lowers himself back into the driver's seat. "So," asks his wife, "are you vaccinated, then?"
No One's Perfect
When the severed vas deferens accidentally reconnect and sterility returns, that's called "recanalization."
That's what happened to my buddy Mark in the scenario several paragraphs back, to cause the startling post-vasectomy twins. Belker says the rate of recanalization is "one in 2,000 to 2,500, according to a large British study, the best study available on the rate of reconnection. It usually occurs in first year but can occur five or six years down the road."
