"Forced Rest" Post-Race with a Vasectomy

Buckle up. It's gonna get real.

Eight days ago was the TC 10 Mile. I did well, and as a reward, my wife got me a vasectomy the following day (exactly a week ago).

The doctor gave a VERY thorough "informed consent" presentation, and right as he left to prep for the procedure, I felt weak. I passed out 1.5 times. I kinda don't count the first time as I remember my wife talking to me and I just didn't respond (I mean... normal after 23 years of marriage, right?). But then 2 minutes later, I remember "coming to" while finishing up a dream, so I had gone to a different plane. I was OUT for that one. All just while sitting in a chair, but I still passed out. This is VERY UNLIKE ME - "body things" never gross me out. I mean, I watch my own blood draws as they are happening (I took a photo of one happening in 2009, and I watched this one in 2015). Nothing like this has ever happened before. But everyone has their "thing:" I know someone who can deal with EVERYTHING medical-related, but if you talk about eyeballs, they lose their cookies. Apparently I'm good with everything except talking about my scrotum being splayed open. Who knew?

I walked to the bathroom with my wife, and looked down into my underwear: I put lidocaine cream on my testicles and covered it all with saran wrap at home to start the numbing process an hour earlier, and as I peeled that away for the procedure, I was reminded of pulling that parchment circle off the top of a tub of mid-quality greek yogurt. Mmmmm... tangy.

I got up onto the table and joked that I'd be happy to pass out again and that the Doc should just "go to town and do his thing" if I blacked out - that'd be easier all around. (I was totally serious.) I was placed under a sheet like a woman having a C-section. I snapped this candid photo of my wife joining me:

I was TOTALLY FINE during the 20 minute procedure. Not woozy at all. We all chatted the entire time:

My balls were on display 3 feet to the south like a rare jewel at an auction house.

I felt the burning shots, I felt some gentle tugging, and we smelled the burning of flesh as he burned 4 spots of my vas deferens. I could feel tools, scalpels, clamps, etc. on my thighs and I joked that I probably looked like a partially dissected frog in a science lab down there.

What I pictured it looked like on the other side of the curtain.

He was able to do it all through a single half-inch incision. (He didn't know if he would need 2, but he got it all done in 1.) They showed me the 2 parts of my vas deferens that they removed, and they were bigger than we thought:

Note the little burned ends where they were cauterized.

I first joked that if we took them home, Charlie would try to use them as fish bait. And then (because my wife's birthday was 2 days later) we wished we brought them home so I could turn them into some kindergarten-like macaroni necklace or something. Maybe they'd make a nice set of earrings. (Insert some joke about someone asking "Are those diamonds?" "No, but they ARE my husband's jewels!")

He glued me up, put in 1 stitch as well, slathered copious amounts of salve over my testes, and then placed even MORE copious amounts of gauze on top of me. I was walking through the hospital with a Bowie-esque codpiece. I sat in the car and looked down to a very unfamiliar sight:

I'm not usually built like this.

I took off the gauze to pee about 4-5 hours later, and was surprised it was a bit bloody:

I went to pick up my son from school, we all went to his soccer game, and then we got groceries afterwards. (I was planning on staying home for all of that, but I felt FINE.) As my wife loaded groceries in the car (I wasn't supposed to lift much), Charlie and I ran next door to get some boba tea - this was for me because I was such a brave widdle boy at the doctor:

Comment from my sister-in-law regarding my special treat.

Henry knew about the procedure and we were talking about it as he walked upstairs. He casually yelled down from the top of the steps: "I think we'll need to get Dad a cone..."

I had ibuprofen and Tylenol a few times that evening, but then nothing the next day. Things "ached" a little, but not bad. I had some nice bruising on the front of my scrotum that extended half-way down my shaft. But no need to ice anything or to take pain meds. As I got ready to teach class about 25 hours after my procedure, I still had some bloody salve in my undies:

Reapplying salve 2-3x daily. Surprised there was still blood the morning of day 2.

All I did athletically that day (day 2, Tuesday) was to go for a short short walk:

After hard training, a hard race, and now 2 days taking it easy, my Garmin
said I was "peaking" and ready to race! But no hard race for me for a while!

Wednesday I walked nearly a mile. The bruising was at its peak. It looked like my penis had been running barefoot on fresh asphalt for an hour. Again, more texts between me and my sisters-in-law:

Thursday, I taught a big class again and was feeling quite good. I was REALLY working to take it easy beacuse all of the horror stories I heard about vasectomies all started with men doing too much too quickly after their procedure. I WAS getting antsy, and my daily steps looked like this on Thursday evening:

My Garmin told me I averaged 20,000 steps per day
for the past year, but only about 7,000 these last 4 days.

Friday felt ALMOST normal. Saturday was the first I could do this stretch without fear of popping a testicle:

Sunday I went for a 3 mile walk. Felt good!

The "overuse" or "too active too quickly" injuries usually result in a grapefruit sized scrotum that's filled with blood. The outer glue / stitches usually don't break, but the INNER scabs can fall off and the blood has no where to go so it's trapped in the scrotum. AND THEN THAT JUST LASTS FOR 4 TO 8 WEEKS. NO BIGGIE. I'm sorry, but I don't want that. At all. Ever.

So in the name of proper doctor-prescribed rest, this past week of "steps" and "intensity minutes" looked SHOCKING compared to normal. I've never seen them look like this. Here are small graphs of the last 4 weeks of "intensity minutes," and the first week starts small because it was the week right after the Square Lake Sprint Triathlon so I was resting up a bit, the 2nd week was a BIG final push of training for the TC 10 Mile, the 3rd week was easier as it was a pre-race rest week (racing the end of that week), and then the 4th week started with a vasectomy:

WILD looking graph for last week!


A good / normal week a few weeks ago hitting 1800+ intensity minutes...


... compared to barely getting 150 this past week.


A look at the last year: brief injuries in January and April
(with dips in minutes) and then the TINIEST blip of a week
last week! (Yes, that's the ENTIRE WEEK.)


Weekly steps for the past year: averaging nearly 140K steps/week, but only 70K last week.

My training log usually looks like this, showing 2 weeks from late last month...

... but last week looked like this: noting I had a vasectomy on Monday,
and then trying to do 20 mins of easy core on Sunday without rupturing anything.

I'm trying my first easy run later today... with my compression Under Armor shorts helping to hold everything in place. And I'll try a little strength work later today as well. I've been able to shower normally since day 2, but I'm not supposed to "soak" my testes (so no swimming) for 2+ weeks. I'm cleared to bike a little again, but sitting on a bike seat doesn't quite sound appealing juuuuuuust yet. I'm hoping to ease back into it throughout this week, and then hopefully have a quite normal training week next week! Maybe still slightly reduced next week, but CLOSE to normal is the goal in a week.

Also, I get to start having sex again. I'm supposed to ejaculate 20+ times over the next 7 weeks to "clear my pipes" as there's still semen "downstream from the work that was done." (Quotes from my doctor.) So there's now a notecard on my bedside table so I can keep track:

Watch for updates with tallies...

I'll go back in 2 months with a "special men" sample (oh wait... I mean "specimen" sample... but same diff) so they can check for sperm to make sure I'm shooting blanks. Fun fact: it needs to be dropped off within 30 minutes of "production," so I can imagine someone living far out in the suburbs driving into downtown MPLS to the hospital saying "Honey, you've got to take the wheel! My hands are busy! It's a 40 minute drive and we're halfway there! Gotta get this FRESH for the Doc!"

There's actually a 1 in 2000 chance of my vas deferens growing back together on their own someday ("spontaneous vasectomy recanalization"), but that small stat is almost always from those who don't rest up properly afterwards, and I've been a good boy. It also seems to include those who don't do the "special men" follow up to check if it worked well in the first place. Or at least that's my understanding of it.

I'm off on a run shortly!... Wish me luck!