Vasectomy vs. Tubal Ligation

About two years ago my wife and I decided that we weren't going to have any more children.  At least not the biological way.  We still might adopt 1 or 2 kids.  Benefits: we'll know we we'll get a baby girl and Islena won't practically die during pregnancy due to dehydration/malnutrition from vomiting.  Anyway, we were looking at options to not have to deal with contraception for the next 20 years or whatever, and we wanted to compare vasectomies (where the guy is sterilized) and tubal ligations (where the girl is sterilized).  Here's what we found out:

Picture of vasectomy from http://urology.jhu.edu/male/Vasectomy.php 

                                                     Vasectomy                        Tubal Ligation

Length of procedure:                      30 minutes                        2 hours

Complexity of procedure:               Very simple                      Fairly complex

Recovery time:                               2-5 days                           3 weeks
Immediate complications:                Few/rare                           Some/uncommon
Short-term complications:               Few/rare                          Some/uncommon
Medium-term complications:           Few/rare                          Some/uncommon
Long-term complications:               Few/rare                           Some/uncommon

Cost:                                             $500.00                            $3,000.00

Chance of pregnancy after:             Very low                          Fairly low

Picture of Laser Vasectomy from http://jrgrink.dancersblogs.com/vascetomymoral/

What is a Vasectomy?  Two tiny holes are made in the scrotum, then a hook is put through.  The lines connecting the testicles to the prostate are fished out, cut, and tied or sealed shut.  This stops sperm from getting to the prostate.  Sperm is actually only a small percentage of the semen that comes out during sex.  No sperm, no babies.  THIS IN NO WAY STOPS STDs!!!  Men with vasectomies have a slightly higher rate of getting and giving STDs because there are idiots out there that decide they don't need a condom when sleeping with multiple partners or a partner that has multiple partners.  As you'll note in a previous post, this can cause CANCER!  So the Vas Deferens are cut and sealed and put back in.  The holes in the scrotum are so small a bandaid would be more than enough to soak up any bleeding.

Picture of DIY vasectomy from http://www.sydesjokes.com/page.php?v1=Diy%20Vasectomy%20Kit&v2=d/diy_vasectomy_kit.jpg&v3=t&v4=Medical

You can have sex again in about a week, and for the next couple of months, you'll send samples of semen to a lab every few weeks until they confirm a sample with no live sperm in it.  Then you know you will never have any more children.  Vasectomies are considered permanent, but there is a chance to reverse them if needed.  I got on the internet looking for stories about the effects of vasectomies, and found a couple of websites with some horror stories on them.  But really, the few guys that have complications will complain about it long and loud, and the many guys that are blaming their problems on a vasectomy even though they are unrelated will also post about it a lot.  The 99% that have no issues with their vasectomies have other things in life to think about, and you probably won't hear them commenting about it much. 

My experience was like almost everybody else.  It really wasn't a big deal.  My soreness was fading about two days afterwards.  We went to Wheeler Farm on a family trip that Saturday, and there was this pig with mega-huge testicles that didn't fit between it's legs and so they stuck out the back.  Kindred spirit I said, but really it wasn't bad. 

Picture of tubal ligation from http://health.stateuniversity.com/pages/1573/Tubal-Ligation.html

Tubal ligation is actually pretty similar as far as cutting and then sealing tubes.  It's just deep inside a woman's body.  There's a lot more room for error.  It's more expensive.  Complications are more common and more serious.  Etc.  Basically, GO FOR THE VASECTOMY!!!

Web sites comparing tubal ligations to vasectomies: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080124174902AAeTpv4  and http://www.vascenters.com/tubal.htm 

Higher Education: Is it worth it?

I've been in higher education for a while now as a student. Tomorrow I'll "walk" for my Masters degree in speech language pathology. And for a while at least, I'll be done with school. In all my time in higher education, I've thought a lot about what's wrong and what's right with it.

Some of the problems that I see are that almost half the kids that start it don't finish it, some of the classes are not useful for career preparation or experience broadening, in most fields the on the job training after the needed degree is more important than the degree, there are many areas graduating people that will have a degree and no work afterwards, and some professors don't know how to teach.

The issue reviewed in most of the anti-higher education articles in the news lately is money, and how it costs too much, or is no longer worth it. The most balanced of these (and the longest) is in New York magazine's http://nymag.com/news/features/college-education-2011-5/ article titled The University Has No Clothes. Another is on ABC and titled The High Price of Higher Ed:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=5846470&page=1

Honestly, it's true that higher education is expensive. For those that graduate, it is, on average, worth it by a lot. For those that don't graduate, it is... totally not worth it. So the lesson to take home is... graduate. And I have. This will be the fourth time. My first two degrees, including an Associates degree and a BA in English Literature, were definitely not worth in terms of financial returns. I was a bit angry after I finished my BA, we were having our first son, and I couldn't get a job. But I should have known that a BA in English Literature (which doesn't allow you to be an English teacher in a school) wouldn't get me a good job. My thought at the time was to become a professor of English. But there seemed to be a lot of professors of English, and not a lot of work for professors of English. And to become the great novel writer that I wanted to be, another degree wouldn't help very much. So I changed course.

I heard about Speech therapy. High pay, very high demand. In this terrible economy, I've turned down offers of $62,000, $83,000, and $73,000 per year. Why? Because it rains too much or too little there, or it's too far. I have more offers, and I'll accept one in the next couple of weeks. I've been out of school for 14 years. I've never made more than $12.00 an hour. Now I'll be making between $30 and $40 an hour full time. I have mega student loans to pay off. That's not too hard with triple the pay. Will it have been financially worth it to me? Yes.

The important thing to do when going to the University is having a good end goal in mind. Don't go because you're supposed to go. Go when you know what you're going to do. A life saving website is http://www.bls.gov/oco/ This is the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ooh_index.htm
The above link is to the alphabetized Index of occupations. Scroll through it, find an interesting career and click. IT IS AWESOME!!! You'll find about nine sections of information about the interesting career, including Nature of the work, Training, Qualifications, and Advancement, Employment, Job Outlook, Projections, Earnings, Wages, Related Occupations, and Sources of Additional Information.

Even if you already have your career job, you can find out a lot of information about it. In another area of the web site, you can find specific information about how much the average employee makes in each of the 50 states, and even in hundreds of metropolitan areas.

All this appears to be a waste to the great entrepreneurs that seem able to take their ideas and create wealth. It's also less important to the great researchers at the top of academia and science that are responsible for so many life saving and technological achievements. But for everyone else, it seems that it's nice to know where the goal is before getting into school. I highly suggest it.

There was a point when I thought I wouldn't ever finish the University. I failed classes. I failed a couple of semesters. I didn't think I had the discipline to see it through to the end. In my case, having children while I was in school was a huge help. Failure was no longer an option. I had to mature, start attending class all the time, study for the tests, and start preparing and writing papers a bit earlier.

I'm still not a perfect student. I didn't do a lot of the assigned readings, and many in my class didn't either. I sometimes started papers and homework the night before. A lot of times I didn't study for the tests for more than a couple of hours. But I did what was required. And I gained a lot of knowledge that will actually be useful to me in my career. More importantly, I gained a perverse love of research... And it may not be too long before I'm a student yet again. This time for the PhD.

These last paragraphs are for all the people like me out there. The grad students aren't all type A do it all know it alls. I'd say in most of my undergrad classes about 80% of the students procrastinated as long as possible to do any school work. In my graduate level classes, about 60% of us procrastinated as long as possible before doing school work. True many of the worst offenders don't make it to grad school, or reform themselves like me to be able to get through it, but I just wanna say for anyone that's doubting themselves, YOU CAN DO IT! and IT IS WORTH IT IF YOU DO!

Peace Out.

Speechies Rock!

Jeff