"Four Days Out, and It's Still the Size of a Whoopie Cushion"

Last week, possessed by all-too-familiar body image demons, I got in a funk, wherein I stomped around and moaned to Groom, "I just can't lose these damn seven pounds. You know I want to blame it on my tortoise-like metabolism, but, yea, it might be more honest just to label it my Wine Weight. Poop, poop, poop, I hate this. I hate being hungry all day and still never losing a pound. Blah, blah, blah, blech, blech, blech, feh, meh, waaaaah."

In response, Groom threatened to throw the scale out the window, assured me people don't gasp in horror when I walk by, and we moved on with our lives.

Then.

The next day.

Groomeo-Groomeo went into the clinic for a quick and easy 45-minute elective surgery, one aimed at controlling global population, particularly within our house. Basically, he went in to have his vas deferens tightened and resurfaced.

An hour later, he was home, and as he stood there, peppily recounting to me the procedure, things changed.

Suddenly. Dramatically.

Eight hours later, freshly back from the hospital, I sent out a quick email rundown to select friends and family:


So if you've ever seen a Hallmark card that reads "Sorry About Your Botched Vasectomy!!!", go back now and purchase it. Then write "Jocelyn's Groom, c/o St. Luke's Hospital, Duluth" on the envelope and mail that sucker.

Yea, having a vasectomy is supposedly an easy in-and-out-of-the-clinic-in-under-an-hour procedure...but when you then get home and start holding forth about how it all went fine, while at the same time your expensive Kavu pants are suddenly drenched with a waterfall of blood...well, then, the "easy" procedure takes on something called "complications."

Within minutes, you find yourself laying on the bedroom floor on a stack of towels, holding three washcloths and a bag of ice to your Boy Parts as you ask your wife to bring you "some of those pad things you wear every month; I need something that really staunches the flow of blood."

Thirty seconds later, you might advise your wife to call the doc, who, upon hearing of the amount of blood smeared all over the floors of the second story of your home, tells the wife to "pack your husband in a plastic bag if you need to, but get him back up here, fast."

When you get back to the clinic, the doc will try to lance your cantaloupian groinal region with a scalpel repeatedly as he notes that he's not seen this type of problem after a vasectomy before. He will excuse himself from the room to talk to the urologist. He will return to the room minutes later and tell you they're expecting you at the ER downtown.

A quick slide down the hill, and you will be in a wheelchair and heading to the operating room at the hospital within six minutes of walking through the doors. By the time your wife hands over your insurance card, they'll have told you "in our parts, we call this an eggplant scrotum." They are very apt in their description.

Eight minutes after you enter the ER, you are in the operating room FOR FOUR FREAKING HOURS.

During all this, a sainted neighbor has watched, read to, fed, and tucked in your children. The low point of the evening occurs when your wife realizes she's just read every magazine in the waiting room, including the AARP periodical. She slaps herself when she realizes she enjoyed an article about alleviating joint pain.

A bit before nine p.m., lovely nurses secret your wife into the recovery room to see you before she heads home to Children of Love. You tell your wife, "I'm pretty confused. I feel like I've been run over." You eat lots of ice chips.

So it's a night in the hospital for Vasectomy Man, complete with complimentary drains in your scrotal sack, plus the bonus of a catheter. But they stopped all the bleeding and tell you there will be no long-term effects.

Despite this assurance to the Males of the World, you would like to urge them to consider continuing their fertility until they die, even if it means they have 24 children.

On that note, the tired wife, who has typed up this acccount, retires to her bottle of Shiraz.

Jocelyn

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The next day, we found out that, for some fluke reason, his vasectomy stitches had popped and caused the arteries on both sides down there to bleed buckets. While he ended up not needing a transfusion, his hemoglobin was low the next day, so Groom ended up spending two nights in the hospital.

He's been home two days now, hobbling around in his pajama pants, asking me periodically to fill another Ziploc bag with snow (the perfect anti-inflammatory). While he's planning a shuffle outside and down to the corner someday soon, just to take the air, it will still be some time before he drives or wears pants with a zipper.

After all the hullabaloo, we did have a lovely moment, though, on Saturday, when I bent down,

kissed his cheek,

and thanked him for finding exactly the right technique to help me

lose five pounds in two days.