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What it’s like to live-tweet a vasectomy

Now that The Doctor has spent a solid 27 months of her life carrying and delivering three adorable little babies for our family, last Friday marked The Dad’s turn to finally take one for the team.

So he got a vasectomy.

And as a public service to all the dads out there who might be wondering, “What is getting a vasectomy really like?” – he decided to live-tweet the whole thing.

In case you missed out on this once-in-a-lifetime Twitter party as it happened, here’s a recap of how @DoctorAndDad‘s #VasectomyLiveTweet went down. Keep reading to see everything The Dad posted that day, plus get some exclusive, behind-the-scenes info from him that’ll show you the full story of what really happened – between the tweets!

Here’s what happened when I decided to live-tweet my vasectomy (by The Dad)

It all started with a tiny, microscopic germ cell of an idea:

In case you didn’t know, a vasectomy is performed using local anesthesia only – so you’re awake, and able to tweet, the whole time. If your doctor lets you, that is.

A quick search uncovered a couple of guys on Twitter who had wanted to live-tweet their Vs previously, but couldn’t because their urologists wanted nothing to do with that nonsense.

So at this point I called the doctor’s office and asked if I could have my phone with me during the procedure. “Oh sure,” the receptionist told me.

And this live-tweet was officially on:

I headed to the doctor’s office:

After an unsettlingly short wait, I was led into a private room, told to take off my pants, put on a gown that opens in the front, and have a seat right here:

I did as I was told. After all, it’s hard to be defiant when you’re not wearing pants. (Unless you’re my two-and-a-half-year-old son, who frequently removes his pants as an act of defiance.)

Before long, a friendly dude (was he a nurse? a lab technician? a random guy who sneaks into urologists’ offices to look at men’s junk?) came in to prep me for surgery.

Then this happened:

I don’t think he was correct about not needing power, by the way. But it came back on pretty much immediately, so my last best chance at getting out of this thing just flew out the window.

And the dude got to prepping:

At this point, the nurse/technician/random pervert noticed my phone and remarked, “Oh, you’re the guy who called about wanting to use your phone.”

Oh crap, I thought. They’re onto me.

“Well it’s cool with us,” he continued, “as long as you’re not posting all over Instagram.”

“I’m not posting to Instagram,” I laughed.

“That would be crazy.”

He tells me the doctor will be in shortly, then leaves. And for quite a long time, I’m alone with just my phone, my thoughts and my freshly shorn nether regions.

Until finally, the door flew open, the doc came in, and this shizz started getting real:

He really did mention those things. And he really did perform his own vasectomy. The guy’s clearly crazy. But he’s also funny. And I can respect that.

I’ll be honest. It got kind of difficult to tweet right about here. That’s because the doctor started getting handsy with my boys, which got pretty uncomfortable. For a while, I couldn’t do much more than put my hand over my face and breath through it:

Once he found what he was looking for, the doc stuck a needle in me, and I was numb – and feeling a-ok – pretty much right away.

Then he started the actual procedure, which he explained involved cutting out a portion of the vas deferens, then kind of melting each remaining end of the tubes onto themselves, and then stitching them all up for added effectiveness.

I never looked down (because I’m not completely insane), but one of my other senses couldn’t help but observe what was going on:

So the doc did one side, then the other, and then gave me his official prognosis:

The doctor and his assistant gave me a flurry of post-op instructions (I’m still not sure if I was supposed to ice myself for 15 minutes or 2 hours at a time) and a brown paper “goodie” bag as if I had just attended a child’s birthday party.

And before I could even pull up my pants, they were gone!

Recovery has been about what I expected.

Things are fairly sore down there, so fully supportive underwear, ice-cold objects and sitting around not doing much of anything have been my BFFs.

Hopefully after a full week recouping, I’ll be back to my parkour-loving, splits-doing, chainsaw-juggling self.

Here’s hoping no one “loses a penis” in the process!

2 replies on “What it’s like to live-tweet a vasectomy”

Hubby, who ‘been there, did that” back in 1988 loved the story (I did too) –HE said “it wasn’t that bad”–I don’t think I’ve heard that comment too many times about childbirth (if ever) Lol!

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