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My vasectomy has spontaneously reversed itself nearly a decade after its confirmed success. I only learned this after my wife became pregnant, which, due to a lifelong pre-existing condition, is a severe hazard to her health.
I know what you're thinking -- what are the odds of a vasectomy spontaneously reversing itself after that long? Isn't there some alternative hypothesis for that positive pregnancy test that you're not considering? No, not the possibility of an hCG-secreting tumor, another alternative hypothesis?
Have no fear, I have confirmed the reversal with my own eyes on my own microscope, on a sample I collected and prepared. There are a multitude of obviously motile sperm where they have no business being. I've been betrayed by my own ballsack, making me some kind of regenerative mutant worthy of my own case study. Lucky me!
We're terminating this miraculous pregnancy with all haste. Even if it had been a full legal person that were putting my wife through the same hell this anonymous homunculus has been putting her through for the past few weeks, I'd be trying my best to kill them too. She's been no stranger to suffering in her life, and this, in light of her condition, has managed to top the list -- she'd likely be in better shape if it were a tumor. The possibility that she could carry this to a successful completion if she wanted to is remote.
Without getting too culture-war, I consider us fortunate to live in a polity where nobody will try to gainsay her decision, and it's been enlightening to see firsthand how narrow a window there is to make it. "Medical" rather than "surgical" abortion is only reliable up to about 10 weeks, and in her case, with a long history of chronically irregular menstruation, the first 6 weeks elapsed before she was unprecedentedly "late". With our low prior on pregnancy in light of my long-confirmed successful vasectomy, it took us another two weeks to nail down that this was actually the most likely cause of the shitshow of bizarre and disabling symptoms she was experiencing. Add one more week from there to procure the actual abortifacients, and the window had almost closed.
I'll be getting a second vasectomy, but I don't know I'll ever trust it again. Life finds a fucking way.
Okay but do something about the alternate hypothesis.
There's no evidence for it, given there's no longer any doubt that I could have put this thing there.
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I've never had to go with my SO to have an abortion done, if only because the one time we slipped up, the baby took the hint and made its own way out the door before we had to. We got an IUD inserted posthaste, the fact we're both doctors made it easy enough to convince the gyno Consultant to sign off on an IUD despite it not being recommended for women who haven't had a kid (the risk is insignificant).
It would have been rather awkward to take the matter to my own gyno parents to say the least, so I'm glad we didn't have to.
I'm grateful everyday that abortion is a matter of fact in India and not remotely a contentious topic, regardless of what a handful of Catholic nutters might want. I suppose the Hindus probably just want to tell the fetus to Git Gud or reincarnate as an ant next time, and if the Muslims have any hangups, then it's not obvious from the number who show up for MTPs.
Vasectomy reversals, while rare, are hardly unheard of, but it's an unfortunate occurrence nonetheless. I second @TheDag 's advice to get an IUD inserted.
Yeah I knew it could reverse itself at some point, but I really figured that at nine years post I was safe by now. I have literally seen case studies about late reversals that weren't as late as this.
lol at telling the fetus to git gud -- my wife jokes that she'd be disappointed in this kid from the start from pursuing such a dumb strategy that includes preventing her from holding down any nutrition for either of them. She also jokes that she should apologize to her own mother -- an abusive psychopath -- for having put her through any fraction of this misery as a fetus (she didn't put her mom through anything like this though -- if she'd been a difficult pregnancy, her mom would have absolutely blamed her for it, and in reality she just blamed her for the associated weight gain).
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Might want to look into IUDs, although I'm sure you probably have. My understanding is that they're even more effective than vasectomies.
We have strong reasons to believe she would not tolerate either hormonal or copper IUD, but yeah, we did consider that before I got the vasectomy.
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Life, uh, finds a way, doesn't it? Can you get a refund from the clinic that performed the original surgery?
I don't believe they actually did anything wrong -- it did provably work at the time, and continued to work for many years afterward. They performed the procedure about as aggressively as possible -- this was not one of the "open ended" vasectomies that may have a greater probability of recanalization, they definitely clamped and possibly cauterized both ends of the snipped tubes, and I think they removed a pretty long section in between. The guy was really serious about how he was optimizing for efficacy over potential voluntary reversibility.
I'm guessing this freaky occurrence is partly a result of my having it done younger than most men, which means I probably had more regenerative capacity and also a longer window of potential failure while my partner is still fertile. 40-year-old dudes with 40-year-old wives getting vasectomies after their third child or whatever are unlikely to notice if their procedure reverses itself in ten years, cause no pregnancy will likely result anyway.
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I'm also interested to know if @lemograb is entitled to any financial compensation.
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This late? Almost certainly not, the procedure doesn't come without the small but real risk of failure.
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Even I, an inveterate pro-lifer for religious reasons first, logical reasons second, applaud your decision (though despising the tragic necessity). It’s a killing in self defense, akin to shooting an armed burglar who broke into your home.
But since this is WW, not CWR, I instead wish you and your wife the best, and the best possible outcome, and a long and happy life for both of you. if you need to see someone about lingering emotions related to this, do so without shame or reproach.
Thank you. Without being religious or a pro-lifer myself, I still hoped it would never come to this, and I did take reasonable measures to try to ensure it would not.
Not being attached to a personhood-from-conception perspective, or ever that invested in the whole controversy in general, I take the normie view of regarding abortion as unfortunate, and getting more uncomfortable with it the later it occurs. Reflecting on that in light of recent events has made me more in favor of removing as many obstacles to early abortion as possible, so it's less likely to come down to a more distasteful later procedure. It seems the more people's inputs are required to authorize it, the later the ones that do happen will happen, even if fewer happen overall. I can see though how for many people with a more "principled" stance, this would be a distinction without difference, and fewer happening overall would be the overriding consideration.
I'm still glad for her sake that there wasn't some long sequence of gatekeepers to argue with about this, having just seen the person I care most for in the world consider taking her own life to get the awfulness here to stop. Thankfully it's lessened since, with some medications that would not be safe for a fetus that we were trying to preserve.
I still find it creepy that there seem to be people who are straightforwardly pro-abortion as though it's a positive good (and those are many of the voices one encounters when actually considering having one). I kind of assume those people are just overcompensating somehow, in a "signalling support for this direction". If it's not that, I don't know where they're coming from, and probably don't want to.
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😒
That captures the essence of my attitude toward my nuts at present.
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