Wun Hung Lo
“Here you go,” said the nurse. “I need you to go in there and put this on.” She handed me one of those patented little nighties with no rear. I took the nighty from her. It was cold.
“What do I need to be wearing when I come out?” I asked.
“Just that. Nothing else,” was the reply.
Obediently, I ducked into the little restroom and took my boots off. I poked my head back out. “Nothing else?” The nurse looked at me. “Nothing else,” she said. “You can’t get a vasectomy wearing jeans.” I sighed and closed the door again.
I managed to achieve full frontal and rearal nudity, and tied the little nighty on. It was pretty breezy. Back out into the “procedure room” I went, holding the rear of the nighty closed with one hand. The nurse was waiting. “I need you to hop up on this table,” she said. To this very day, that was the last time the word “hop” has entered my vocabulary.
“GAAAAAHHHH!” I hollered as my rather delicate (and overly-exposed) tuckus hit the table. “That’s COLD!” I positioned myself on the table best I could.
“Yeah, we keep it in the freezer and wheel it out just before the procedure,” said the nurse. “I’ll be with you in just a minute. First I need to soak all the instruments in this ice water…”
I lay on the cold table, staring at the ceiling, listening to the miscellaneous noises of nurses preparing instruments for “minor medical procedures.” I started to get a little worried. I don’t much care for pain, you see, and just from what I could see from my vantage point on the cold table most everything in the room was designed to poke, prod, cut or zap various parts of the human body… Worrisome.
“Okay,” said the nurse after a while, “I need to strap you down now.”
“WHAT?”
“We’re going to restrain you,” she said. “You’ll be all woozy on happy-juice during the operation. Some men thrash around a little. The last thing you want to do is kick the doctor while she’s got a scalpel aimed at your testicles.” She got out four padded rubber rope-thing.
“You’re serious?”
“I’m serious.”
I put my head back on the table. Somehow being strapped naked (almost) to an operating table while various women wander by playing doctor wasn’t nearly as fun a person might suppose. The nurse tightened the strap on my right hand and moved to my left side.
“Okay, I’m just going to put an IV in this arm before I strap it in,” the nurse said, grabbing a nasty-looking needle. I looked up at her. Her shirt had cartoon cats on it. She grabbed my arm and started feeling for a vein, frowning. After a few moments she strapped a rubber band around my arm and started slapping my wrist. She frowned some more. I started to get a bit more nervous.
“Okay,” she said, an intent look on her face, “you’re just going to feel a small prick.”
“Odd, that’s just what I told my wife last night. OW! Hey, that hurt!”
“Sorry,” she said, pulling the needle out of my arm. “I missed. I’m going to try again. Just relax.”
“Relax? I’m strapped naked on a table with people putting needles in me. This isn’t exactly petting puppies, you know. OW! Stop that!”
“Sorry,” she said. “I missed.”
She tried five more times, then gave up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t seem to get the needle into your vein. I’m going to have to get someone else to give it a try…”
“It’s okay,” I whimpered. “I’m sure you did your best.” The nurse went to a phone and mumbled something, then nodded to herself.
“Okay, someone’s on their way,” she said. “In the meantime, I need to tape your penis up out of the way.” She lifted my little gown up and grabbed a roll of tape.
“You do realize that shrinkage is NOT a theory,” I asked her.
“Trust me,” she said, “this is a lot worse for you than it is for me.” She grabbed what little pride I have and taped it up with tape I can only assume came from the same freezer they keep everything else in. “Gaaaah! That’s COLD!”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” she said. “You just wait for a minute…” She turned around and got a bottle of something off the shelf. “I have to put this on your scrotum,” she said, pouring a bunch of goop on my boys.
“HOOOOOO!” I hollered. Then, “eeeeeeeeeep” as I tried to inhale. Then “HOoooooooo MAN that’s cold! What is that? Liquid nitrogen? My oh my oh geeze that’s cold!”
About that time the doctor lady breezed in. “Hi, how’s everything going here?” she asked me, looking around.
“I’m strapped naked on a cold table with five puncture wounds in my arm and my balls are marinating in liquid methane,” I said. “I’ve had better days.”
“No IV yet?” the doctor asked the nurse. “Must have bad veins. Call me as soon as you start the drip.” She hung her coat up in the corner and went out the other door. At almost the same time the first door opened and another nurse came in.
“Oh,” she said, glancing at my ever-shrinking penis, “a vasectomy, huh? Trouble with the IV?” The first nurse nodded, then the two of them team tackled my left arm, poking it repeatedly with various sharp instruments.
“Ha! Got it!” the second nurse said after a while. “That should do the trick!” The first nurse went over and called the doctor. Within minutes the doctor was in place. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s start the IV.” She then mumbled some numbers and Latin phrases. The nurse did something to the IV, and the world started spinning. The last thing I remember was me saying, “Geeze your hands are cold!”
When I woke up the doctor was gone and the nurse was just tucking my gown back into place. I don’t really remember much, but I did manage to put my clothes back on (with the mandatory athletic supporter) and sit in the nice wheelchair. I heard the nurse talking to my beloved Alpine wife Dagmar, but I was too busy feeling happily medicated to pay much attention to what they were saying. They wheeled me out the door and got me sitting gingerly in the car, and before I knew it I was home, wearing my jammies (and that damned tight jock strap they told me to wear), laying on the couch, a bag of frozen peas pressed on my crotch.
I napped off and on most of the day, feeling rather tender and fragile. By nighttime I had noticed that my left boy was fine — no pain at all. But the right one hurt like no one’s business. I went to the bathroom to check things out a bit… Indeed, the left guy felt fine, but the right boy was swollen to about three times normal size.
“Honey,” I called as I tottered delicately out of the bathroom, “did the doctor say anything about the procedure? Did something happen that I should know about?”
“Vell,” said Dagmar, “the nurse did say dat dere vas a lot of bleeding on vun side, und that you’ll probably be swollen and bruised for quite some time. She said you’ll probably be in a lot of pain for a while.”
“Something went wrong?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Dagmar answered. “De nurse said they had to stop the procedure halfway through to try to stop the bleeding, and that you’ll be in pain for a while. She looked pretty nervous vhen she told me.”
It’s now been almost exactly 30 hours since the procedure, and I’m still walking funny. My one little guy is fine, no pain or swelling at all, just a little itch where the stitches are. The other is all swollen and is a monstrous shade of purple… I tell you what, I sure hope this gets better soon! I’m afraid to sneeze.
If you’re reading this on Facebook, you can see the original blog at www.radloffs.net, click on “Blog.”
It’s been two weeks since my “procedure,” and my right “boy” is still the size of a rather elongated lemon. The fierce, piercing pain is gone (thankfully), but I’m still all bruised, tender, achy and sore — like you’d expect of a bruised testicle the size of a lemon, I guess. It’s hard for me to walk very far, and getting in and out of the car is particularly painful. I can sit long enough to get some work done, but it’s not comfortable. The doctor tells me it could be weeks before the swelling goes down noticeably and months before it’s gone. I’ve quit taking painkillers about a week ago, but I still take ibuprofin almost every day. I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to have Dagmar — she’s been incredibly patient, kind, helpful, caring… She’s the best. She really takes good care of me, and I’m grateful. The cat, on the other hand, who weighs about fifteen pounds, likes to jump in my lap unexpectedly. Dagmar’s had several heart-to-hearts with Fruitloop about that. He seems to listen.
