I swear, I'm trying to keep it together but my body is conspiring against me
...
Everyone I talked to said it wouldn’t be a big deal. Even the doctor said as much. “You’ll be in and out in like 15-20 minutes,” he said. He clearly didn’t know who he was dealing with. To be fair, he was partially correct: the vasectomy itself only took about 15 minutes. But I was in the room for over an hour.
Before the procedure, I felt relaxed. The time had finally come, and I was ready to get it over with.
“You can be on your phone and watch something during it if you want to,” the nurse said.
Pleasantly surprised and thankful for the digital distraction, I grabbed my iPhone and texted my wife who was hanging out in the waiting room.
Lyle (me/husband/patient): Hi, the nurse said I can be on my phone during the procedure lol
Allison (wife): That is so funny! What is happening now?
L: She just shaved my testicles Lolol
A: I’m sure that was awkward
L: It wasn’t too bad. She was fast at it!
A: lol, her secret skill
The nurse left the room, and with a thin cloth draped over my groin, I waited for the doctor to come in. Allison took the opportunity to use the restroom. A few minutes later, the doctor arrived and got straight to work.
A: I’m back
L: I’m getting numbed up now. Thankfully not as bad as I thought it would be to get poked down there
A: Is it getting numb quickly?
L: Yeah he said it only takes a minute. He’s doing something else down there already
A: I should have asked if I could watch!
L: lol
I actually did laugh out loud and told the doctor about our exchange, to which he replied, “She can come in if she doesn’t get queasy.”
L: He just said you can come in if you want to
A: Yes!
And so a minute later Allison came in and stood by my side while the doctor continued to root around in my junk.
She’s not a stranger to watching surgeries. On her mom’s side, she has a brother who is 20 years younger than her, and just over 20 years ago, she drove home from college to watch his birth via C-section.
As the doctor was working, he shared what he was doing and Allison asked questions, while I tried to relax and not flinch too much if he hit a spot that wasn’t completely numb. Watching how fascinated she was with the process helped keep my mind off of it.
*
Allison and I originally wanted to have two kids (in addition to my stepdaughter). Then Em came along in June 2018 and the lack of blood and oxygen to her brain during birth caused her cerebral palsy disability. We spent a month in the hospital with her, during which I never slept in our bed at home. And then an intense first year or so filled with a feeding tube surgery, a couple of emergency room visits when said tube came out, a bunch of doctor’s appointments, and countless therapy sessions, all while we attempted to keep showing up for our jobs.
Em is five-and-a-half years old now. She still requires 24/7 supervision and needs assistance doing just about everything—except for breathing, which, honestly, feels like a miracle considering she struggled early on to keep her blood oxygen levels up and she coded twice during her first week of life. That being said, Em is an amazing kid. She’s generally calm, unless she’s excited about something (currently, she’s most excited about a video of a Raffi concert from 1989), which causes her to scream with pure joy and her limbs to flail wildly. She’s happy most of the time. She’s resilient. And she’s cute as hell.
I admire parents who decide to have another child after the previous one develops a disability. We know one couple who have done it. We are not that type of couple.
Having another child would be incredibly stressful, especially leading up to the birth. Before Em was born, there were no warning signs that anything was wrong until she was delivered in the hospital, grey-colored and unbreathing, needing to be resuscitated. In our minds, it was too traumatic of an experience to tempt fate a second time. Plus, these days we quite literally have our hands full with her, and she’s not getting any smaller.
We did leave the door open to changing our minds. But, in actuality, our decision was made years ago. I was getting a vasectomy at some point.
I had been anxious about the procedure in the weeks leading up to it. My rumination wasn’t about not being able to have kids anymore—I had already come to terms with that (or so I thought). Instead, I wondered if the procedure would be uncomfortable since it didn’t require anesthesia. I wondered if it would affect my libido afterward. But more than anything else, I wondered if I would pass out.
*
I was fine when the doctor showed Allison and me the little bits he cut out. I was fine while he cauterized something down there and I saw smoke rising from my crotch. I was fine for several minutes after the procedure too.
Yet shortly after I arose to put my jeans on, I started to feel lightheaded. With my lengthy history of passing out easily, I’ve become very attuned to the feeling and quickly laid back down on the table. I recovered almost immediately and shook my head and I laughed it off.
The nurse said, “We’ll take it easy and slowly raise you up this time.”
Hanging out with Allison in a doctor’s office wasn’t how I envisioned spending my afternoon. I was annoyed and wanted to go home and take it easy. Maybe watch a movie or something similarly mindless.
Every five or ten minutes, the nurse would come back in and ask how I was feeling. “I’m fine,” I’d say. And she would incrementally raise the back of the table until, finally, I was sitting upright.
I felt normal. I felt ready to get out of there.
Until suddenly, I didn’t.
I felt the queasiness come on strong and vaguely remember telling Allison I wasn’t feeling well. The next thing I knew, I was lying down on the table, which had been lowered down again, drenched in a cold sweat. I later learned that Allison had kept me from tipping over onto the tile floor and hopped to the other side of the table to stomp on the foot pedal that lowered the table.
When I reawoke, I heard Allison’s voice saying, “You’re okay. I’m right here.” And I instantly started sobbing. The emotional release felt like a combination of the scariness of having a chunk of my life erased from my consciousness (albeit a very brief chunk) and the gravity of the procedure I had just gone through all at once. I had been trying to be stoic and keep my shit together leading up to passing out, but my body conspired against me and my tears flowed.
When the doctor heard what happened, he offered to get me something to eat and drink. He returned with a handful of butter cookies, likely left over from one of those gift tins, and a can of Diet Pepsi. As I attempted to eat the cookies without raining crumbs all over the place, I kept apologizing to Allison. She kept assuring me that it was okay. And I kept thinking about how grateful I was that she was there by my side.
It’s embarrassing to be so susceptible to fainting. When I tell people I pass out easily, it’s usually couched within a funny story (or three). Other times, it’s a more serious story. No matter the events surrounding the episodes, though, they’re unsettling as they’re happening. Or, I should say, immediately after they happen, since I’m unconscious throughout them.
Yet this time felt different. More emotional. More intense. It’s one thing to occasionally feel like I might pass out while doing a tough HIIT workout. In those instances, I can simply lie down and let my heart rate come down a bit before jumping back in. But it’s another thing to have it come on so suddenly when I was feeling okay physically and thought I was feeling okay emotionally.
Days later, as I was in the shower, the emotional weight of the procedure hit me again. I thought about how I can’t have kids anymore. The finality of the procedure brought back the dreams and expectations I had when Allison was pregnant with Em. I dreamed of teaching her to play golf. I expected to see her first steps. But the instant she was born, those dreams and expectations changed forever.
I remember early on after Em was born, thinking that eventually, over time, I would reflect on life since her birth and be unable to imagine it any differently. Uh, yeah, I’m still not quite there yet. Maybe I won’t ever be. Time heals all wounds. Sure. But you still remember how you got them.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I wish things turned out differently for Em and my family. Of course, I wish she were able to eat and walk and talk, with a younger sibling learning how to walk now too—mostly for her sake, not mine. And yet, I can’t change what happened. I have to accept it and be ready for the grief to hit at random, unexpected times. Like it always does.
I wrote this piece during the latest Foster cohort. Thank you to those of you in the community who heard me read snippets of it, or read an early draft, and provided feedback. It is a much better piece because of you.
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I’m so moved by this. Like everyone else said, your writing is beautiful, raw, honest. I remember something that my friend who worked in Cincinnati Children’s hospital as a music therapist used to say, that in families with a child with a disability, the divorce rate was something like 80 or 90 percent, if I remember right. You obviously are much stronger than most people in a similar situation and you have so much love and wisdom and self-awareness and kindness in your writing and obviously in your life. Your posts inspire and move me, always. Thank you thank you for sharing yourself, and your talent. Reading you is priceless and precious.
Incredibly honest & raw write. I live with men who are susceptible to fainting. It's not a flaw, it's just who they are. Your stories about Em are always heart-wrenching and heart-lifting.