"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!

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"Rest Week" is Over

"Rest week" was a success: last week, I cut back my running mileage by 1/3 and took out all intensity. I only did 1 swim last week for the first time in MANY months (usually I do 2, but my shoulder got achy early last week). And I had a few nice rides (2 outdoor for 63 miles, and 45 mins on a bike at the gym). Time to ramp it up a bit more before the TC 10 Mile on Oct 1.

The only thing a rest week is NOT good for is my mental strength. My "long" run of 6 miles yesterday with the boys felt a bit too hard, which is depressing:

A group of "skiers" slowly passed us, and I wanted to shout "MUSH!"

Well, 11+ miles this weekend, maybe 12 later the next week, then 9 days of easier runs before the race!

Here's my TC 10 Mile prediction from Saturday's post. (Which seems SOO not possible after an easy/slow week.)

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Rest is OVER

Yesterday marked 4 weeks since the TC 10 Mile (and the end of the Loony Challenge). I didn't run for a week after that, and that easy run 3 weeks ago was still a little painful for my achilles. So I took the next 3 weeks off. No running. No swimming. A few SHORT easy rides. Just mainly core work, leg exercises, stretching, and rolling.

Here's what the last 3 weeks look like in my training log:

The 2 short bike rides were trying out bikes before getting my new ride,
and then the 14 miler was when I just HAD to go for a ride
and try out my new bike (as seen in Saturday's post).

I didn't foam roll, PVC roll, or stretch every day. I feel like there are days I just need COMPLETE rest - I think that ALWAYS stretching isn't good for me. My heel sometimes feels better when I just let it rest for 2 days. (But at other times it needs a lot of attention, so I try to balance it out.)

After a week off, my sacrum injury from 2 years ago started to get achy. It's like that NEEDS some attention all the time. Total rest makes it hurt a bit.

My achilles (as expected) slowly felt better during the 3 weeks off. It wasn't constantly an upward slope - some days it felt a little worse, and some days it felt a little better. I wore 1 calf sleeve on it on days I'd be on my feet a lot, and that helped.

AND THEN I RAN 2 DAYS AGO! I did 4 miles easy, and my heel felt 100%! I know it's NOT 100%, but I was happy it felt so good and had to tell myself to quit while I was ahead. I'll use this easy 31 minute 4 miler as my base for where I start thinking about the next few weeks/months...

GOALS/PLANS FOR THE NEXT FEW MONTHS:

• Run easy, 3x/week, running the same distance all week while building by about 3-4 minutes each week. This was essentially what I did after my sacrum injury 2 years ago, and after spraining my ankle 18-months ago. It worked. I need to remind myself to just run easy for 2 reasons: first, building a good base will help keep me injury-free next year. Second, as I pointed out in my 2014 Waseca Triathlon race report, running a lot of HARDER workouts DOES make me faster, but not too much. So why not ease up for a bit, stop abusing my body, and just build some distance? Sounds good, right?

• No running on the track at the Y. I'd LOVE to be able to do this because it's easy to do when I drop the boys at the "Kids Care" at the Y. But when I went on an shorter, easier run on the track a few months ago, it made my ankle upset. (From the sprain 18-months ago being aggravated by all the turns on the 6-laps-to-a-mile track.) No need to be dumb with that.

• No weight lifting or swimming until the elbow heals up. I'm getting really, really, really. Really. Really. REALLY. REALLY. Pissed off at my elbow. I'm contacting my orthopedic elbow Doc again today to see if there's something more we can do. That's all I want to say because I don't want to get upset by this.

• Eat better. I've had a lot of junk in the last few weeks. I LIKE junk, but I need to eat it a bit more in moderation. I ate an apple yesterday after my ride, so we'll call that good for the week.

• Hit the bike/trainer when possible: maybe 2x/week all winter? I'm in a good spot with my biking; I'm not annoyed doing it. So I want to keep pushing that, but making sure I don't push myself into getting bored on it. I'll bike outside on my new bike while it's dry for maybe the next month, then put my old bike on the trainer and sweat all over that for the winter.

Speaking of biking, I did my "go-to" loop yesterday (the final ride shown in the calendar above). I went out KINDA hard on my new bike Eiffel, but wasn't time trial or tempo pace. I eased up once I got up Ramsey Hill, and then did a little extra on my way home. I realized once I'd climbed Ramsey that I had a 20.7 mph ave on a route were my PR ride on that route ridden ALL OUT had a 20.5 mph average! And this was a route with some rollers, and I haven't ridden hills since August 4th. This was all the new bike. I may have to go for an "all out" ride on this loop later this week to see if I can set a route PR.

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Final Garden Update of 2015

Well, I'm almost 2 weeks into my 2-3 weeks of rest. I used some rest time this past week to do some yard work and clean up our garden.

We just wrapped up a successful 2nd year of growing veggies in our tiny garden. (Here's a link to some photos from the first year.) Below are some photos from throughout the summer of 2015. Any of the photos that are a "scrapbook" of multiple images are files that I Instagrammed throughout the summer.

May 9th: shortly after planting.


In the north box: zucchinis, cucumbers, peppers, and basil peppered in.


In the south box: peppers, tomatoes, basil, lavender, and rosemary.


Before a mid-May frost.


A month later. We also had a cherry tomato plant on our patio, and we transplanted some rhubarb
from the neighbor's yard (the home that's for sale - it was going to be dug up during landscaping).


July 1st: the cucumbers reached the top of the trellis.


July 7th: Charlie and I both got stung before we found a burrowing wasp nest
next to our garden. LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THE QUEEN AT THE BOTTOM!


Harvesting a lot of cucumbers on July 12th (and then grilling tasty food).


Henry with 2 cukes a few days later...


… and 3 more cukes and 2 nice zucchinis.

Sometime in mid-July, we had a big storm come through and knock a lot of stuff down: all the peppers were tipped over, and the tomatoes fell too (including the one in the pot on the patio). It didn't seem to damage our yields, but it made everything ugly and harder to manage. (Like my body hair.) Next year, I'm going to cage our peppers, and do a better job with the tomato cages.

Early August. Note the big tomatoes tipped out of the planter box and into our neighbor's yard.
Also the pepper plant that looked so nice 2 photos above is now tipped over sideways.


A good harvest on Aug 13. (Along with an onion from my Mom's garden.)

Then, about a week ago, we did some final "green" veggie picking before a hard frost to close out the year. Here's Henry dancing around the garden last Thursday:

The cucumber vines were all dried up, and the tomato plants were more horizontal than vertical.


Final harvest: lots of tiny zucchinis, some final cukes, and a lot of green tomatoes.

Earlier this week, we pulled everything out:

Henry yanking on one of the tomato plants to pull it out.


Everything out except for the rosemary in the middle (which I want to pot and bring inside).
The zucchinis to the left were pulled out and set aside to dry up a bit.

Here's our final 2015 "harvest count" for our little 18" wide garden:

- "Early Girl" tomatoes: 33
- "Beefmaster" tomatoes: 22
- Cherry tomatoes: 97 (but my wife ate a LOT off the plant without keeping good count, so it's probably more like 120+)
- Cucumbers: 50
- Zucchinis: 16
- Yellow peppers: 9
- Red peppers: 1
- Orange peppers: 1 (Squirrels/bunnies got a lot of our red and orange peppers as they ripened.)
- Lots of basil
- Final end-of-season picking yielded 28 more tomatoes ("early girl" and "beefmaster"), 7 small zucchinis, and 4 red/orange peppers.

Oh, and I used up most of those final tiny zucchinis 2 nights ago by sautéing them with garlic salt, rosemary, and some parmesan cheese. We ate them on top of lasagna:

So I'll cage the peppers and tomatoes better next year, and MAYBE do more with containers on the patio, but otherwise we'll plan on doing something similar in 2016. Happy Fall!

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Rest Day #5 and 6: Candy Store, Scarecrow Festival, and Farming

Last Friday, the boys and I met my sister's family and my Mom at "Minnesota's Largest Candy Store." Here are 3 quick photos from that, but you can see a lot more in a post on my "root beer" blog:

This is only about 20% of their soda selection!


Candy EVERYWHERE, and puzzles lining the ceiling.

I got 2 cases of assorted sodas, with 1 case being mainly root beer. Click here for more photos.

Then we went a few more miles down the road to Emma Krumbees and their "Scarecrow Festival." It was the 3rd year we've done that. Here are some pics:

My niece jumping off the haystack!
And that's my Mom, little Charlie, Henry at the top, and my nephew on the right.


Charlie hobbling around in his snowsuit. It was 45 degrees and WINDY.


My Mom and Charlie.


Pumpkins.


My sis and the 4 kids on a short tractor ride.


A goofy one!


My sister's pic on the hayride. See?... I was there too!


Lunch.


Sliding.


A "train" ride. My nephew has Charlie on his lap in front of me,
Henry's waving, and my niece is at the very front.


Our gang on the pirate ship!


The boys were both PASSED OUT before we could get back on the highway when we left!

We headed to my parents house. The plan was for me to help with tillage. But that didn't happen. On Friday evening, Dad was getting close to done with a field. On Saturday morning, he finished it (he wants to do that himself to get the edges right) and then started on a different field. And by the time the final field was started, it was nearing time for us boys to pack up and go, so I got NO time behind the wheel of a tractor. Dang. Well I tried. But Henry got to ride for a bit with Grandpa:

Grandpa finishing a round.


Henry and Grandpa pulling away.




Charlie reminds me of his other Grandpa in this photo!


Swinging in Grandma's backyard.


Helping Grandma make applesauce the next morning.


Visiting Mike (Pharmie's younger brother) and Brianna's chickens!


Charlie wanted to catch one SO BAD.


Chasing chickens through the garden.


Another day, another nap in the car over the long ride back home.

On the injury/rest front: I wore my calf sleeves all day under my jeans to (1) keep me warm when it was chilly, and (2) to help my calves. My legs felt good all of Friday and Saturday! (They were a bit achy yesterday.)

And after a big day Friday of hauling Charlie around at the candy store, Scarecrow Festival, and at Grandpa and Grandma's house, my forearm/elbow pain really flared up. It's still pretty angry from Friday. I *think* it's on the mend overall, but Friday was just a bit of a set-back.

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