Special Feature Report - Vasectomy.

I can't say that I've ever heard blokes discussing the subject much; the occasional passing comment that one has had one is about as far as it ever goes. Women will cheerfully discuss how many stitches they had in the perineum during childbirth over a cup of tea, but you don't often find blokes willing to discuss what happens when another bloke's fooling around with his testicles.

Well, I don't care, so I'm going to tell you all about it.

The operation is simple enough, and - as I like to do with medical procedures - I watched, so I think I can get this pretty accurately!

First off, the scrotum needs to be completely shaved, and while this is done by the patient, unless you're used to shaving your balls, the doctor will probably have to get out the old straight razor and shave the last few.

Then comes local injection into the scrotum. Locals don't really hurt at all, and the sensory level is somewhat less than pulling out a pubic hair. The local, as it does at the dentist, numbs an area of flesh & skin, but it appears not to work on the testicles themselves. This makes logical sense to me, because the anaesthetic is designed to spread to connected flesh, hence numbing of an area from the anus to the penis, but as the plums are attached to the prostate rather than the flesh, they aren't deadened in feeling at all. More on this later.

Next up comes the first rort: a vasectomy advertised as a "no scalpel" method raises the spectre of no cut, but a small pair of scissors is used to make the incision - about half a centimetre long - in the side of the scrotum. (Maybe scissors are considered friendlier than scalpels in some quarters, but if you've ever watched a few episiotomies, you'd be a damned sight more scared of scissors!)

Then, the balls are manipulated by a lovely nurse to present the vas deferens - the tube which sperm travel through - to the incision. The cut bleeds slowly during the entire operation, which lasts about 15 minutes. This is where the thought of non-anaesthetised balls comes from, because the testicles send plenty of information about what's going on. I must say that it's the first time a gorgeous blonde has played with my balls and sexual thoughts did not arise, shall we say! She actually has to push them around fairly sternly at times, and you can certainly feel that.

Once the vas deferens is withdrawn through the hole, it is stretched to get enough material to cut & tie. More about the stretching later as well. The vas deferens is nearly identical to a cooked noodle from a 2 Minute Noodle pack. Same colour, same size, same squiggliness. A piece of it about 1 cm long is cut out with a pair of scissors and the ends are tied in some complicated way I couldn't quite figure, but the ends end up looking like a string with a simple one-turn knot tied at the very end.

This end is then cauterised with a cute little piece of equipment which is basically a tiny arc-welder, but without the welding rod. As this thing is put next to the bit to be cauterised, tiny sparks jump from the tip onto the nearest bit of flesh, which then sizzles until done. Smells surprisingly edible - I intend to try fried mountain oysters one of these days.

Once that's done, you're halfway, with the process being repeated for whichever bollock is still attached, but the tricky part here is that testicles have natural tendency to hang on their own side, and that's the wrong side for grabbing the vas deferens from, so a certain amount of pushing and squeezing those testes happens about now, and it isn't all that pleasant. Once the little blighter's found, the same process is completed, then it all gets packed back in the right places and all that's left is the incision. This is closed with the same mini arc-welder as used internally, and you trot off home with instructions to rest - totally superfluous instructions as it transpires.

Once the local wears off, there is no major pain, but an awful lot of tenderness in both the balls and surrounding flesh and thoughts of physical exercise are not extant!