My Vasectomy – Part 1

I went to see the doctor today and I am being referred for a vasectomy. I’m not sure when it will actually get done, but the ball – if you will excuse the pun – is now rolling.

“Oh, I preferred it when he didn’t blog about his testicles as much as he does these days,” you may be saying. Well, if that’s what you think, I suggest you go and read something else for the next few months.

That is because I am going to write a series of posts about this experience – an experience that many men of my age will be either going through or considering. I hope that I can help them or at least amuse them – and others – by providing a non-medical commentary on the whole thing, from decision time to aftermath.

So, I’m not just talking about my plums (Anonymous commenter – calm yourself...). I am performing a public service.   

This is, if you like, the prologue.

Elvira and I have two boys – Roger Jr (aged 4) and Tancred (aged 2). Despite a few quibbles, they are quite satisfactory. And as they say, two’s company – three’s a crowd.

Neither of us want another child. Two, as I say, is plenty. The end of the whole nappy era is in sight, Roger Jr will be going to school later this year and – who knows – we might be able to start living the lives of normal adult human beings at some near point in the future.

The thing about the whole experience of early parenthood is - like The Shard - it’s one of those things that look better the further away from it you stand. 

And we want to look back fondly on it – forgetting the bad parts and remembering the good parts – not relive it.

Indeed, one of the benefits of our children getting older is that Elvira and I might be able to resume some kind of a sex life. We’re not so concerned about them interrupting us “at it” as we are about the risk that one of them might wake up at 5am – and this, as you can imagine, has a dampening effect on our mutual enthusiasm for anything which delays going to sleep.

However, as many of you may know, baby production is one of the side-effects of sex. That is a bit of a bind. It’s almost as though evolution doesn’t want us to have sex very often.

One way round this risk is for one or the other of us to get “done”. And I drew the short straw on that front.

Now, I must say, it seems rather unfair to me. Apart from the whole impregnation-threat aspect of it, the only unwanted side-effect of me remaining “intact” is an occasional bit of a mess – and apparently even that isn’t affected.

With Elvira, however, there is the whole monthly crazy-woman thing, which – to be frank – I would certainly rather be rid of and I am sure that all other things being equal she would too.

Nevertheless, a hysterectomy (or is it an hysterectomy? I don’t know) is a major procedure, while I will be able to walk away from a vasectomy. Walk away like John Wayne, but you get the picture.

So the way it goes is this:

1. You make an appointment at the doctor’s and tell them you want a vasectomy.
2. They give you some leaflets and say that if you really want a vasectomy, make another appointment and ask again.
3. This no doubt puts off a lot of people who can’t be arsed to go to the doctor’s twice or who die of old age in the meantime.
4. If you do go back, however, the doctor gives you a few warnings (“may contain nuts” kind of boilerplate...) and they write to the bloke who does it – ie consultant urologist – to put you on the list for the next time he comes round with his big elastic band.

Easy innit? And free! God bless socialism.

You would think, wouldn’t you, that I would have some reservations about all this. Last night, I expected I would have had some Freudian dream about castration-anxiety. But as it was I dreamed about how a gibbon would be the perfect assassin: giant powerful hands, but completely innocent-looking.

No doubt, when the fatal day arrives, I will be feeling a little bit more anxious. And I will pick up the story then. No turning back now. 

...

Well, actually there is ample opportunity for turning back. But you know what I mean.

Postscript:

Thanks to all the people who got in touch to tell me I used the word "tupping" incorrectly in the previous draft of this post. I feel like a proper eejit now.