My Vasectomy – Part 4

So it is done. I have been vasectomised. And it was not as bad as you might think.

Friday night’s alright for shaving

By Friday evening, I was getting a bit anxious about it all. I had not managed to put it out of my mind all day (as my previous post, written that day, possibly indicates) and I was in a bad temper by the time I got home.

Fortunately, that evening, I had the distraction of working out how to shave myself (scrotumnally) to take my mind off the impending operation.

I should really say “the aftermath of the operation”. I’ve had enough local anaesthetics in my time to know that the operation itself was not going to hurt (see below...). What I was worried about was what kind of a state I would be in when the drugs wore off and how I was going to survive the recovery period with two groin-height and fast-moving children careering around the vicinity of my delicacy.

Anyway, back to shaving. I had, as previously mentioned, bought some Veet – and been repeatedly warned of its perils, not least by the estimable Bernard C in a comment on the last post – for which I am very grateful.

To be perfectly honest, I found it no problem. Apart from the peculiar smell – which could have been from the “finishing cream” that came in the pack – it didn’t hurt or even feel uncomfortable at all. Perhaps I have a particularly leathery and unfeeling scrotum, but having prepared for the worst, I was pleasantly surprised.

Some men – I am told – voluntarily shave themselves in this region, ostensibly for aesthetic reasons. I must admit to finding it a very strange interpretation of what is aesthetically pleasing to make any of THAT more rather than less visible.

Palmerston

For those who take an interest in such things, I opted for a style of my own design, which I am calling “The Palmerston”.

Sitting in the waiting room

My appointment was at 10.50am. Elvira drove me down to the surgery and in I went. A receptionist sat behind the desk of the deserted waiting room.

“I have – an appointment – for 10.50,” I said.

I didn’t have to say what for.

“Take a seat please,” she said. I took one.

I tried to lose myself in my book (“The Story of the Malakand Field Force” by Winston Churchill), but Radio 2’s Jon Holmes standing in for Graham Norton kept dragging me back to the moment.

There was a crash from down the corridor.

“I hope he has steadier hands than that,” I said to the receptionist, who smiled wanly. Inside I cringed at the rushed and lazy wording of the joke and tried to return to the Afghan frontier.

“Mr Of Sicily? Will you come through please?”

The nurse didn’t say that. She used my real name. It was the last time I would hear it with intact plums.

What it was like

What do you think it was like? I was lying there, discussing summer holidays and other trivia with the surgeon while my genitalia was operated on through a hole in a sheet. It’s hard to find the positive in the experience itself.

By the way, the surgeon did take the time to congratulate me on the quality of the shaving job I had done. I said I was pretty pleased with my handiwork, for a first attempt.

Look away now if you are squeamish.

What I will say is that the local anaesthetic does the job just fine. You don’t feel a thing when it comes to the cutting and sewing.

There was a degree of “rough handling” prior to the numbing, in order to bring the vas deferens to the surface. This was a forestaste of what was to come.

I was not expecting the extreme discomfort of said tube being pulled out. It was a kind of pain that only a man can understand (sorry ladies – indeed, women seem to have been far more interested in my story so far than men. I cannot understand why...) and it shot all the way up to the pit of my stomach.  It felt...welll...like someone had got hold of the strings my balls are held on with and given them a long, steady tug.

But it was over quickly. I walked out of the operating theatre 15 or so after going in. I was the 8^th bloke the surgeon had seen to that day, and it still wasn’t even lunchtime.

The aftermath

Only once was I unable to walk, and that was a couple of hours after the operation – presumably after the first flush of cocodamol was out of my system (it has been ever-present every since up to the time of writing). Since then, I have recovered much quicker than I thought I would.

The boys have been very good at staying off me. Only once did Tancred hit me in the nuts, when I was drying his hair last night. And I think he knew he had erred.

Lord Palmerston appears to have been the victim of a serious mugging. Gentlemen, if you have never seen your huevos go black and double in size, I suggest you prepare yourself.

Tight pants are a must. Unexpected rapid movement is not pleasant. Lie flat on your back in bed. It took me about ten minutes to walk from the station to my office this morning – that’s usually more like four. Riding the scooter was ok, but I definitely do not want to make any emergency stops.

So what now? Well, apparently the vehicle continues to run on fumes – and that can last for three months. I have to supply “samples” in October and November to see if this has worked, or if my Wolverine-like powers of healing have restored my testicular functioning in the meantime. So I don’t know if it worked or not.

My face, Saturday afternoon

However, I do not regret it. People may ask me, “why on earth did you do it if you can’t even be sure it will work?”

To which my answer is and will remain, “I’d rather go through that than have any more children!”

I love my kids, of course, but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing.

And that, dear friends, concludes July’s gonad-centric entries. I hope it has made you laugh and made you cry. It has certainly brought tears to my eyes on occasion. 

My Vasectomy – Part 3

Upstairs Amish - in case a later joke goes over anyone's head

Some people have expressed surprise that I am writing about having a vasectomy as it happens. 

Their issues seem to fall into two categories:

1. It’s unlike me to talk about such a thing

2. It is unseemly to talk about such a thing

The first point is pretty accurate. I probably wouldn’t say many of the things I’ve said on here face to face with people. And, if any of you do come face to face with me in the near future – to tell the truth – I’d rather not discuss any of this with you.

Having said that, there is something of the confidential diary about writing a blog. I sit here by myself writing it, in a sense, to myself. Unlike half-witted footballers using Twitter, however, I am actually well aware that this is not a private environment and that anyone can read it.

For what it’s worth, I’ve always felt much more comfortable addressing large groups of people from a stage of sorts – be it public speaking or any kind of performing – than I am talking “up close and personal”. And this is the same sort of thing, with the added bonus that I can edit what I'm saying. 

So, people who haul me up on the first point: well, guilty as charged.

On the second point – yeah, there’s a wince factor. And yeah, perhaps it’s too much information and you’d rather not know quite so much about it all.

Sorry, but writing about it – making a joke about something that is both inherently frightening and ridiculous – is helping me. And it might be helpful to someone else who is thinking about having a vasectomy but can’t find anything that says “what it’s like” – just loads of GCSE biology diagrams.

That’s enough self-justification.

Back to my testicles.

This evening, I will have to shave my balls. Yesterday, I bought some Veet “bikini and armpit cream” with which to do it. I felt a little embarrassed in the shop choosing my product, but then it occurred to me that – looking at me (for I am a hirsute man) – nobody could assume otherwise than that I was buying depilatories for someone else.

Still, it was one of the few occasions on which I was actually pleased to use one of those awful self-service checkouts. You know, the kind that have to have a team of staff watching over them to help customers who can’t work them out and to unlock them when they crash.

As you will recall, I was instructed to deforest “the top of the testicles” in particular.

Right now, I am pondering whether to go for the full Mitchell Brothers or just the downstairs Amish. Any suggestions gladly received. 

My Vasectomy - Part 2

I had not planned on writing about this again so soon – I had expected to have at least a few weeks to forget about it before having to face the reality of what I have let myself in for.

But thanks to “a cancellation” they have got room to squeeze me in for my vasectomy THIS SATURDAY.

When they asked me if I wanted the place last Friday, I wouldn’t say I jumped at the opportunity – but the prospect of getting it over with more quickly, even at the expense of narrative pacing, was as appealing as anything concerned with bollock surgery feasibly could be.

I must confess, readers, I am feeling slightly less bullish about the whole thing than I was at the last time of writing, when I expected a good old 16-week NHS waiting list. But I have a sneaking suspicion that would have been the case whenever the date got confirmed. 

Between now and then, I have to figure out exactly how to comply with this red-ink-and-italics command printed on the letter:

Please shave the scrotal area (testicles) on the day of surgery, in particular on top of the testicles.

So, Saturday will see me do two things I've never done before! Thanks for repeating the word “testicles” in the course of that sentence, by the way. It had almost slipped my mind that they were involved. Still, at least I won't just be sat around all morning waiting - I will have a challenge to occupy me. 

And now if you will excuse me, the dog has something I am going to need...

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. 

Mayan Apocalypse Liveblog - Half-Time Analysis

T-175: Whooo-ooo, we’re halfway there! 175 days have elapsed since I started liveblogging the run up to the end of the world, and 175 days remain.

Let’s review the main portents so far:

 - Wettest June on record – check

 - Imminent collapse of global economic and social fabric – check

 - Nadal out of Wimbledon – check

If there’s anything left in this world you want to do or see, you’d really better get on with it. Look how quickly the first half of all the time that remains to us flew by! And with 25 Sundays between now and then, that's a mere 150 shopping days. 

Architecture and Morality

I have been wandering around Leeds city centre at lunchtimes since the start of the year.

Given that one can only get so far and still have enough time to get back to the office, as you can probably imagine, the novelty soon wore off.

However, seeing as I am doing it for exercise – having cancelled my gym membership at the end of the year – I have been persevering with it, while trying to find new ways of making it interesting.

First off, I am listening to my Michel Thomas German language course a lot. All I need to take this to the next level (as we say whilst inwardly dying in management meetings) is find someone else who wants to speak German and start speaking to them. In German.

Right now, all I’m doing is walking about whispering to myself – which is, of course, the international language of the mental patient.

Secondly, I am looking up.

Most of the people shuffling around the city streets rarely raise they eyes above the level of the shop-fronts. I, however, have been looking at the uppermost parts of Leeds’ buildings and I’ve reached two conclusions:

1. There is a hell of a lot of vacant commercial property in the city centre - so if you need business premises, you should be able to get a very good deal.

2. If you flooded or buried Leeds to a depth of about 15 feet, you'd actually be left with quite a beautiful place.

There are some really fascinating buildings around which you would never give a second glance to because of the staggeringly banal contents of their ground floors. The most extreme example of former "oooh" and present "meh" surely has to be the one-time Jubilee Hotel on The Headrow – now the "Red Leopard" lapdancing establishment.

My personal favourite is St Paul’s House in Park Square (right). It looks like the Doge’s Palace, only with an “office space to let” sign pinned to the outside.

The Leeds City Markets building (at the top) would not look out of place in Paris or Vienna, despite being inhabited primarily by people offering to unlock stolen mobile phones. And the Town Hall is also a thing of beauty.

THEN, you look at what’s in between these brilliant examples of Victorian ambition and craftsmanship and you realise that if the Victorians were wrong about one thing, it was that history moves forwards towards a better future. 

Pretty much every building from the 20^th century onwards looks horrendous, cheap and nasty.  The court buildings look like they’ve been made out of Lego, for example. And they probably have. 

“Ah, here he goes again, imagining the past was SO MUCH BETTER than the present”, I hear you say. “The reason why old buildings look better than modern ones is that the crap old buildings fell down or were knocked down years ago.”

Please excuse any Prince Charles tendencies here. Some modern buildings are indeed impressive and beautiful in their own way. The Gherkin in London is quite something.

But – to me - they are things you look at and say “that’s a clever statement” rather than “that is a work of art”. Same as the difference between Tracey Emin’s bed and a Caravaggio.

 So, present-day architects: more stone-work please. More domes. More intricacy, less concept please. OK?

Tetley Brewery - or what's left of it

Another thing you notice about Leeds’ buildings is how many of them are completely derelict. I’m not talking about boarded up shops – I mean entire city blocks of buildings going to ruin. The whole area just north of the bus station, for example, around Templar Street and Lady Lane.

Clearly, no one is going to buy them or rent them in their present condition. So why not demolish them?

In fact, here’s an early policy for my future dictatorship. If a building is left unoccupied for more than a year, it has to be EITHER opened up to homeless people OR blown up and returned to nature until someone can think of something worthwhile to put there instead. 

Horsforth and my balls are drenched

Yesterday, I got completely soaked on the way home from work. When I set off in the morning on my trusty scooter, it was a beautiful sunny day.

When I say “beautiful sunny day” you will of course interpret this relatively.  

By the time I arrived at work, it had started to rain and it pretty much didn’t stop from then on. In fact, I don’t think it has stopped yet.

That morning, I did not put my waterproofs on. For some reason, I have developed a bizarre aversion to putting my heavily-armoured and waterproof overtrousers on. It has just become another one of those things I avoid doing even though I almost always feel better after having done so – like shaving or touching ham.

So I just had on normal work trousers and a leather jacket – of a style one might refer to as a “blouson”. Plus helmet and gloves, OBVS.

A brief aside to follow up on and qualify the rave review I gave the Nolan N103 crash helmet back in February 2011.  

1. If you put the helmet on and your hair or face are already a bit wet, the whole “won’t steam up” pinlock magic doesn’t work.
2. The pinlock insert itself has, over the course of a year, wriggled itself a bit loose from the visor being put up and down – and where it has ground against the windscreen, both have scratched at the top and bottom, leaving me with two regions I can’t now see properly out of.

I don’t suppose you get too many reviews of wear and tear on crash helmets, but that, dear friends, you can have for free.

Anyway, back to yesterday morning when I was deciding what to wear. The sun was shining (see disclaimer above) and it is June. How bad could getting a bit wet be?

As the day wore on and the rain came down more and more heavily, but instead of becoming gloomy at the prospect of a soaking my inner Stoic took charge.

“You’re going to get very wet going home, but there’s no way you can avoid getting wet;  you can only get so wet; and as soon as you get home, you can take the wet stuff off. C’mon it’ll be fun,” Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius was whispering into my ear.

Knowing that it was an unavoidable certainty rather than something I had to worry might happen, off I went home rather more cheerful than pathetic fallacy might have suggested.  

By the time I got to my bike, I was pretty soggy. By the time I had cleared Westgate, my trousers were wet through.

Well, I thought, if this is what I’ve been fretting about – if this is as bad as it gets – getting wet really is something only IDIOTS are afraid of.

O reader, knew I then what I now know of the extent and hideous process by which one can become even wetter I would have balked at my overconfidence.

I trundled merrily along, zipping in and out of traffic and laughing maniacally (in my head) at the poor benighted car-drivers who would have to sit in their queues for an hour or more – just because they were scared of a little bit of rain!

Soon, though, a cold discomfort spread to my inner thighs...

At this point, I suppose I should warn you that if the thought of my inner thighs is upsetting to you, it would be advisable to stop reading now – as further, more graphic reference will continue to be made to those regions which, if I were an aircraft, would be generically titled “undercarriage”.

That is rather unpleasant, I thought. It’s not unlike that feeling you get after you’ve been swimming and then sat around in your trunks for a while – you think you’re dry, you stand up, and you realise that certain areas are in fact still very wet. Unpleasant, but tolerable.

But shortly afterwards, as I drove through Horsforth (I had decided to go home a slightly different way! I know! Mi vida loca!) I felt what can only be described as a clenching sensation – reminiscent of a prodded snail retreating into its shell.

I don’t know if anyone here has ever dipped their testicles into cold water, but it is not something I can recommend. Gradually, the rain seeped through my undergarments and dug its icy talons into my beleaguered nutbag.

At the same time, let me add, I was grappling with the fact that I had put my helmet on AFTER getting wet – and so my visor was steaming up from the inside, as well as covered with droplets of rain on the outside. Seeing the road and traffic ahead was already pretty difficult, without the added distraction of intense scrotal chilling.

But, man’s capacity for enduring suffering is great. And soon I got used to it. I won’t say that I liked it – but, hey, adversity breeds strength of character, doesn’t it?

Plus, water goes down. Once it’s there, it’s got nowhere else to go.

OR HAS IT?

I shall spare you too detailed a description of what happened next, suffice to say that under certain, possibly very specific circumstances, water can move upwards. How?

CAPILLARY ACTION!

My face froze as I felt the rainwater creeping up my bumcrack. Slowly but inexorably – like a glacier – it made its cold passage.

-------

Epilogue:

In the intensely frustrating manner of HP Lovecraft, I dare not – must not – say any more. You would all go mad from reading it.

But, I for one will never NEVER leave my waterproofs at home again, and when I look into the cloudy sky forever more will I struggle to suppress a shudder.