Sex ED with Dr. Ogendo

So, I should have known that today’s operation day would be quite funny, because I’m assisting Dr. Ogendo (the one with the famous “now fuck the table” quote) and Dr. Shwa’ib. Dr. Shwa’ib is over the moon with delight that even patients during yesterday’s rounds told him to marry me. It is decided therefore that it must be my destiny, if not only Dr. Ogendo, but also patients would welcome this liaison. Dr. Ogendo has since called me “his daughter in law”.

Our first patient has a hydrokele, fluid around one of his testicles. Dr. Shwa’ib asked Dr. Ogendo why the patient had not come in earlier, and had waited until his balls had grown the size of a cantaloupe. “Well, you see, some women like big balls. During certain positions, going back and forth, it hits the perineum…” Some ten minutes later he was still lecturing us about the biological advantages of big balls. All I could do was to shake my head and blot the incision site with gauze.

For a country that is quite conservative, there is a lot of openness when it comes to fertility. Especially male potency is very important. It’s not uncommon to see women in the maternity ward who are delivering their ninth child. There is a special family planning clinic where females can come to get any kind of contraceptive they would want. Bilateral tube ligation (BLT), or in other words female sterilization, is on the operation board almost every time. I was shocked however to find that BLT’s are also done under just local anesthetics. The anesthesia clearly must not have been sufficient, for the woman’s hands were also tied to the bed posts. I saw the surgeon and the nurse rummaging around the ladies insides like they were doing a C-section, with little regard for the patients pain tolerance. Having assisted on male sterilization/vasectomies in the Netherlands on multiple occasions, and having seen that those procedures take a maximum of 15 minutes with two one-centimeter incisions, I was a little surprised BLTs are more common than vasectomies. Far more common.

Men don’t like getting vasectomies, Dr. James told me. They fear it will lead to loss of pleasure and impotence. And besides, the women often say “don’t operate on my husband, let’s get my tubes tied instead.”  I get a little angry though that the doctors take their time to educate women on their false believes concerning BLTs (could lead to menopause, will reduce sex drive of the woman), but don’t seem to try to reduce the prejudice concerning male vasectomies. Especially when you can hear the woman scream all the way down the block.