Is the snip really as painful as it sounds?

DON’T get the vasectomy issue out of proportion: it could put some men off the whole idea. It’s really nothing to be worried about. I had the operation — if it can be called that — in 1978. It was carried out in the consulting room (the front room of his house) of my local GP in a small village in Lincolnshire. Under a local anaesthetic, he set to with a will while I read a paperback, pausing only when he drew my attention to the severance of the subject tubes and the neat knots he’d tied to ensure no future progeny. The whole performance was completed in, at most, 30 minutes, after which we went to his kitchen where his charming wife made us coffee and I handed over £10. I then walked the half-mile home. However, the two paracetamol tablets he gave me for when the anaesthetic had worn off were insufficient. He said the pain would be like being kicked in the groin area. As a sports player who had suffered many such assaults, I laughed this off. But he hadn’t told me it would be as if Bobby Charlton had been doing the kicking. A day later, I was fine. Moral of the story? Man up, lads, and get it done.

DAVID BRANCHETT, Leyland, Lancs. GUY ADAMS’S experience of ‘the snip’ (Mail) brought back graphic memories of 40 years ago. In my early 30s, I decided to have a vasectomy and paid my £20 to have it done privately. As did Guy, I lay on my back naked from the waist down and closed my eyes. It was ten minutes of total pain before the surgeon said ‘that’s done’, and I felt elated. Then he said: ‘I’m now going to do the other side.’ That was the worst feeling, knowing I was in for another ten minutes of hell. I was bathed in sweat, biting hard on the bedclothes. Then he sprayed some liquid on my nether regions — more agony, but it was to glue together the slit he’d made. At home I told the family to get out of my way and I made a run for the stairs and into bed. Twelve hours later, I was pain-free and had forgotten what I’d been through.

CHRIS WITTS, Gloucester. I’VE had two vasectomies with a reversal in between. First wife, two children — snip. Divorce, remarriage, reconnection, then two more children, then a second snip. It worked fine for me. RAYMOND NORMAN, Hemingstone, Suffolk.