I like to talk about things that I find interesting and many aspects of my life fit that qualification. As soon as I started talking about the decision to get a vasectomy, the first thing a lot of people thought to ask was: “Why?” Many were curious, a few even seemed judgmental. Well like most topics that some would consider “TMI” I am more than happy to tell about about my balls.
First, let me answer the question “why now?” At this point I’ve got myself in a position where I feel like I’m in control of my life. I have reasons to invest in my future because unlike my younger self, I’m looking forward to it.
While reading up on some medical topic online (I forget which) I read that vasectomies are sometimes covered by insurance. I figured that probably meant they’d cover it if you had some kind of genetic disease likely to pass on to your children or something. I had a physical coming up soon so I asked my doctor. He immediately said “Oh yeah they’ll cover it! I’ll have a urologist call you!” Damn, that was fast and easy. I guess we’re off to the races!
I swear you always have to fight to obtain the serious treatments you really need, but when it comes to dick pills or testicle procedures it’s a piece of cake…
No single one of these reasons was the deciding factor, but they all pointed me towards the same conclusion. Let’s start by getting the obvious out of the way.
#1: ME/CFS
Yes, the very reason why I started this blog. If you know me well enough to want to read this post, you’ve probably seen me explain it someplace or another. If you need a refresher that puts it in perspective, these quotes usually do the trick.
From about age 13 to 27 I missed out on a lot of stuff. These are often the ages of excitement, exploration, first-time experiences, and making mistakes. Meanwhile I was being poked, prodded, and penetrated (and not in the fun way my peers were). When I finally started making progress a few years ago I could get out and experience the world around me. I can’t overstate how tough things were during that time, but I don’t like to complain without following it up with a positive – and in this case, it’s the fact that things were so tough before that makes me appreciate everything I have now a lot more.
I’m doing better than ever. You only have to spend a couple minutes with me figure that out. But still, you only see my highlights – my Facebook posts, me out and about – and not all the rest and recovery in-between that’s required. I have to carefully schedule my week around my plans to ensure I have enough energy for everything. Each day I only have so many “prime” hours, and I completely miss out on two days per week from needing to cycle my meds.
Despite these limitations, I never thought I’d make progress like this. I have so many friends, I’m actually making some income, and I’m making memories. I am content.
Now, the future. I will be dealing with this for the rest of my life. I intend to continue my upward trend in figuring out how to make life work with my unique situation. That means taking care of myself is the priority.
Maintaining my health is a full time job. At the moment I’m dealing with the sudden retirement of my psych prescriber. When my last one retired a couple years ago the insurance company sent me a list of approved providers, severely outdated. I had to spend a week on the phone dealing with that before I made any progress.
It wouldn’t be fair to me, wouldn’t be fair for the mother, and wouldn’t be fair for the child. That kind of responsibility requires a lot of time and energy, energy I don’t have.
#2: My thoughts on parenthood have been consistent throughout my entire life
Some people are great around kids. You know the type of people I’m talking about, they’re very warm, expressive, constantly outputting positive energy. I’ve never been one of those people. I’m the guy with the deadpan expression telling jokes so dirty, they’d make Jerry Springer blush. I have a morbid sense of curiosity and feel like I’m running out of Wikipedia reading material when it comes to topics like humankind’s atrocities, the effects of nuclear radiation on the body, and unusual deaths. I decorate the back of my shirt with the image of myself vomiting blood into the shape of brains.
When around kids I feel awkward at best, and at worst they’re horribly annoying little monsters. I can’t tell you how many times someone has told me “I know you’re not big on kids Adam but once you see these kids you’ll change your mind.” Every time I left the situation even more sure of myself.
I used to be a miserable asshole that hated just about everything, I wanted to drag everything down with me. Now, I only spend my time on positive things and am finding positive things about many topics I was previously indifferent about. A few things have remained consistent throughout. This is one of them.
#3: Suppose my feelings change in 15 years… Consider how many kids are out there waiting to be adopted.
I know enough about how our brains work to know that time can change a lot of things. I think the odds are pretty low that this one will change given my situation and attitude, but I’ll entertain the idea. Think about this, though: I remember learning in school that there were 6 billion people in the world. Now there’s over 7.5 billion. That’s a lot of babies!
As time goes on, humankind has created all this amazing technology. You can video chat with someone on the other side of the world in realtime. You can catch a flight to anywhere in the world. It’s never been easier for humans to get togehter, and what do humans tend to do when they’re together?
We make it easier and easier to meet up and have sex and yet we’re still stuck in the stone age when it comes to sex (and drugs) education. For some reason, many people view harm reduction techniques as an endorsement. They get all pissed off when you teach their kids about sex, hand out condoms, or have a Planned Parenthood in town. People are still pushing abstinence-only education and it’s 2020! People are going to have sex whether you like it or not. Everybody seems to know at least one person that’s responsible for more children than they could possible provide for. A little sex education would go a long way.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, slightly less than half (45%) of U.S. pregnancies in 2011 were unintended, approximately 2.8 million pregnancies per year. Wikipedia article on unwanted pregnancies in the US.
#4: I’m taking control of my own body, not relying on the woman’s birth control
Over the years I’ve heard many of my female friends talk about the nasty side-effects that birth control methods have on them. Some are on the pill, some have an implant that slowly releases hormones, there are IUDs, and then there’s good ol’ condoms. Speaking of sex education, I’d never even heard of IUDs until a few years ago. Sure, there are people that use a form of birth control that they’re completely happy with, but for many it can be a real struggle.
I’ve been hearing about a supposedly soon-to-be-released male birth control pill for my entire life. Every few years there seems to be another news story promising it’ll hit the market soon. I don’t know how many rounds of testing these pills need to get FDA approval, but they sure are taking their sweet-ass time.
Men need more options for birth control so women don’t need carry the burden.
I’ve spent the past couple days typing/talking to people about this subject as I often need to do in order to settle my thoughts into something readable. I understand why so many people are curious about this type of thing, and feel I’m good at bringing these type of topics to light. This has been a wild week for sure, and typing this out a couple hours before I rest for a couple days has helped my tie everything together.
Within the next couple weeks I’m going to follow this up with a post detailing the procedure itself – the preparation, the procedure, and the followup. I was asked many different questions about the actual procedure that I’d like to answer, and I also want to share some things I learned myself. Some people even seem to be following along my experiences to help sort through their own feelings and make a decision on this topic.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’re gonna cut open some scrotum and go to town.
Shaking Off the Chains 