Macho

While I've always considered myself a masculine enough fellow -- I have two children and the family resemblance is obvious -- I don't really put myself into the tough-guy category. I don't leap up  onto the table if I see a mouse, but I also don't care much for walking through a major spider web face-first in the early morning woods ...

However, somebody asked me recently what I'd consider a macho moment in my life, where I did something people might widen their eyes a bit if they heard it. I don't have many such occasions, being a sensitive, new-age, ex-hippie with nothing but kind regard for my fellow humans, but there was one instance ...

Back when I was working at the clinic, my wife and I realized that two children were enough for us. The quickest, safest, and most effective form of birth control, we decided, was for me to have a vasectomy.

Those of you unfamiliar with the procedure, it varies somewhat, but the essence of it is simple: Under a local anesthetic, your urologist makes a couple of incisions in your scrotum, sticks a small pair of pliers inside and uses stainless steel clips to clamp shut the vasa deferentia, i.e., the two hoses that carry the wiggly little sperm guys from the testicles, and, after sufficient stimulation, out Mr. Willie. The doctor then cuts the vasa next to the clamp, removes all the toolery, and sutures the incisions closed. With the tunnels shut down, the wiggly guys have nowhere to go, and are reabsorbed and recycled by the body. After six weeks or so to make sure there aren't any of 'em hiding out for a last mighty effort to nail an egg, you no longer can do your half of baby-making.

Gun still works fine, but you are shooting blanks.

On the table and off in twenty minutes, and a few days R&R, with a strategically-placed ice pack, and you are good to go again. (If you are contemplating such a surgery, however, be prepared for the doctor's sense of humor, for invariably at some point in the procedure, while you are numbed up and doubtless staring at the gorgeous nurse he has malignantly chosen to assist him, the doctor will say "Oops!" Which, as all men know, is not a word you want to hear when somebody is waving a sharp scalpel around Mr. Happy ...)

Okay, nothing particularly macho about this --  about half a million of these are done each year in the U.S. alone, and those numbers go up when the economy declines, by the by, for obvious reasons. 

Before I had this procedure done, I had scheduled a tai chi demo at my church, back when we dabbled in Unitarianism. Long ago and far away, I knew the Yang-style long form, and had set up the demonstration  a couple months before I scheduled the surgery. 

I had the procedure done on Friday afternoon, and the demo was for Saturday morning. Now, I was supposed to be lying around with a package of frozen green peas on my groin and moving only if necessary, but being young and still bulletproof, I decided not to cancel the demo. 

Okay, so that might qualify as macho ...

But wait ...

During the demo, which was more active than I had anticipated, I pulled the sutures out on the right side of el scroto. This is not a good thing, and I knew my doctor would take me to task for it, just I would any of my patients who did something so stupid. So, since I was working at a medical clinic, and I had keys to the building and the alarm codes ....

Saturday afternoon, after the clinic closed, I went to the office. Broke out a suture set, sat on the surgery table, and stitched the incision back up.

No big deal at the time, I was a PA, I assisted on minor surgery and sewed cuts frequently, though admittedly on other people. The hard part wasn't doing a couple of interrupted sutures, it was injecting the lidocaine ...

When I tell that story, I usually get a few raised eyebrows. Not like rushing into a burning building to save somebody's child, but I've had guys who do that for a living go pale at the notion of digging a sharp needle and thread into the sack around their balls ...