First off, hello! I haven't written a thing here for ages! The last time i wrote here, I didn't have my first born who turned out to be a boy and then quickly followed by my little girl! Our second baby came a bit unexpectedly soon (well, the first one was unplanned too but I'm very happy to have them nevertheless) so me and the wife started to talk about permanent family planning methods. We originally had wanted to ask her Ob-Gyne about a tubal ligation a few weeks before our youngest was born but it didn't push through. Having two little kids at home also meant she had very little time to go back to her doctor for pills. Although she breastfeeds the kids, (this suppresses her egg production) I knew we couldn't trust it because it failed and our second baby got conceived.
Long story short, I knew that the only viable option for my family was to undergo a vasectomy.
The first doctor quoted me a price of 20 to 25,000 pesos for the procedure so I had to inquire at a public hospital because that price was just too high for me what with the expenses for the two kids. My wife called up doctors at a leading hospital where urologists would usually be found (come on, guess a little) and the doctor's secretary quoted 7-10k for the doctor's professional fee (i won't give his final price so you guys should call your urologist for this) plus 5k for the OR if it was just a local anesthesia and 15k if it was done under general anesthesia.
Since June 11 is sandwiched between a holiday and the weekend, I left work for today and saw the urologist. Going there I was not expecting that he can accommodate my request that the procedure be done the same day I meet him for the first time but he was able to schedule me today. I went there alone since the wife had to take care of the kids and we had to hide it from the other members of the family since we're sure they would not support our decision.
After lunch, I went to the OR, stripped down to my socks and got dressed in the typical OR gown, cap, and shoe covers and waited... and waited... until he finally called me in to the OR. The doctor was assisted by a Nepalese medicine student who applied the anesthesia on my scrotum. This was the most painful part of the operation, but if you've had a circumcision before, it kinda (I can't really remember that part of my life) feels that way. For the gory details, go to youtube, but my operation lasted 50 minutes and that includes the prep for the procedure. The actual procedure lasted 30 minutes though.
There will be times that you will cringe (well, two guys are tugging on your balls!) and you will feel uncomfortable and feel the pressure on your testicles but overall, the local anesthesia does its job well. The Nepalese doctor put band-aid on both the wounds (it's a bilateral vasectomy) before sending me off.
So finally, it was over, I didn't feel woozy, and I was able to walk unassisted to do the post op stuff like paying bills. The doc prescribed Celebrex for the pain (once a day) and Cefuroxime (2x a day for a week) for my antibiotics. I'm writing this stuff 6 hours from the time of operation and when I got home, my balls were swollen. I've been walking around taking care of the bills so that may not have helped at all. I put ice on it for the swelling since that's what good ol' trusty Google told me to do.
So, if you're planning on getting a vasectomy in the Philippines, hopefully I was able to help you out with some info. It's generally cheaper to have it done at a public hospital and I suggest that you go there with your wife so she can take care of the bill paying but I survived on my own. I'm also processing my refund from Philhealth and for this, I needed to get the surgery record (from the Operating Room) and the Official Receipts from my urologist and the Operating Room. I still need to get the form back from my urologist (claim form 2) then I need my employers to sign the claim form 1. I'll write about it next time here. Comments are very welcome! :D
