My wife and I decided I should get a vasectomy. We’ve been living in Taiwan for the past 2 years without any immediate plans to return to America. I’m impressed with their medical and dental care, so I decided to get snipped here.

We booked an appointment with a urologist. The Doctor fondles my balls a bit, says everything looks good (oh stahp!) and we schedule the event. His English is great.

Flash forward to the day of the surgery.

My wife and I are standing at the patient intake. I’m uncomfortable. I’m wearing a thin gown that is much too short and hospital-issue flip-flops.

The moment the doors close between me and my translator wife, I feel the icy fingers of fear curl around my spine. I have to calm myself down and do whatever I can to keep the fight-or-flight reflex in check.

During the initial consultation the doctor spoke great English. I had hoped the nurses would too.

Wrong.

The nurses lead me down a hallway, communicating through gestures and my limited vocabulary of Chinese nouns and verbs. They usher me into a room and onto a padded table. I'm cold.

They begin preparing me. I'm lying face up connected to a pulse-oximeter and a pressure cuff. I am Porky Pig, naked from the waist down.

One nurse asks me a question in Chinese, then repeats the question a few more times after my reply “I don't know. 我不知道”. She seems distressed that I can’t answer her question and disappears beyond the foot of the table.

Suddenly, a woman-robot voice asks me in clear British-English, “Are you here for a vasectomy?”

I giggled like a madman at this moment of sheer absurdity. The nurse was using google.translate to ask me the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION about this operation. The waves of fear came back even stronger and I carefully confirm that, “Yes, I am here to have a vasectomy.”

The next 5 minutes were some of the most strangely fearful of my life. Surgery prep is uncomfortable in the best of circumstances, but it becomes surreal when the nurses are speaking a different language. One nurse frames my groin area with folded towels while the other washes my dick and balls with alcohol and iodine. At some indefinable point it stopped feeling medical and became ritual. Women chanting in a foreign language while anointing my male member for the ceremony.

The spell was broken when the Doctor came in and could function as a translator.

----

The whole procedure took less than 30 minutes, barely any pain. The fear and anxiety were WAY worse than the actual procedure.

I felt okay for the next 2 days, barely using my OTC pain management. Some scrotal bruising and something that felt like bad gas. By day 3 I was feeling well enough to engage in intimate activities.

The whole thing cost about $400 USD because we opted for premium wound-care (an extra $100 because insurance wouldn’t cover it) instead of standard.