Disclaimer 1: I did talk to my urologist throughout this, he probably got tired of heading from me.

Disclaimer 2: I don’t want to suggest anyone’s real pain following their vasectomy is “in their head” when I say parts of my pain are psychologically caused.

I’m 30, don’t have kids, obviously don’t want them. Finally decided to get the snip after my gf was struggling finding the right birth control, and we live in a no abortion state. Here are the mistakes I made, and what I learned, and how I’ve progressed. As the title suggests, I struggle with anxiety and I smoke weed, which plays a role in my healing process.

Day of was terrifying. I screamed the whole time. And I took the Valium. It wasn’t painful, just … conceptually upsetting if you will. Gf took me home set me up in front of the TV and I watched the sopranos while drinking gin and tonics. Icing every 20-30 minutes.

The 1st and 2nd day of recovery had some pain, but by 3 I felt fine and this is where I believe I really fucked myself over. I went out and about with gf and her family, including playing mini golf, and was generally “normally active” day 4 and 5. Because things were going so well, on day 6 I masturbated. Really fast and gentle. Like an idiot, I did it again on day 7. Then the pain started about 3 hours after ejaculating. It is a throbbing rocking pain deep in the testicles, as if something is small pieces are being thrown around inside. Enough to keep me in bed almost all of day 8.

Each day of rest had me thinking I could resume normal activity the next day, but I held off on ejaculating until 2 weeks out. However, going on a short walk brought back the pain and then I would want to just ice and lay in bed. I thought weed would help, but in retrospect I think that just made me focus on the pain more.

The worst experience I had was about 2.5 weeks out, we decided to go to a small, local music festival. I was wearing supportive underwear, but it was still really hot out and I think that complicates things. I also decided to take like 30mg of edibles. We were at the festival for like an hour and then suddenly, however I moved, pulled out one of the stitches. The sensation that moved through my body launched me into a full blown panic attack, I almost fainted. Gf took me to a nearby hotel to breathe and got us a car home.

From there on out, I limited the weed, and didn’t commit to anything requiring any, and I mean any, physical activity. I think the paranoia from the weed outweighed any calming / escapism benefit.

Two things that really helped me that I learned on this sub:

1 Treat this pain like any other pain on your body. Yes, it’s extra scary to feel a shooting pain in your balls, but if you had an operation on your legs, it’d be understandable to have pain like that. Just breathe, it will pass.

2 Warm baths after the stitches fall out / 2ish weeks. Icing is great, but the baths really helped relieve the pain. I’m sure a hot compress would work too.

Now I’m 2 months out and we just went to a sex resort and all went fine, little bit of tenderness after night 2 but some Tylenol and hot tub alleviated much of it.

If you had a vasectomy and have more than normal pain for longer than normal, do not despair! It will go away, you will be able to function.