Vasectomy
The two things men are most afraid of are not part of how I do this.
A vasectomy is a simple office procedure with a long track record, and I perform every one personally at my practice, Peri Health & Hormones, in Draper, Utah.
Two words stop most men from booking this: needle and scalpel. Neither one is part of how I do it, and I have done more than five thousand of these personally. You will also have laughing gas running from start to finish. The gas keeps you relaxed. The no-needle local does the numbing.
No needle. The anesthetic is delivered with a jet injector, which pushes a fine spray through the skin using pressure rather than a needle. Most men describe it as a snap of a rubber band on the skin. Patients feel no injection into the scrotum, which is the part men dread and the part they have usually heard a story about.
No scalpel. Instead of cutting, a small instrument makes a single opening a few millimeters across and spreads the tissue apart rather than slicing it. The vas is lifted through that opening, divided and sealed, and the same is done on the other side. The opening is small enough that it does not need a stitch. It closes on its own.
Less bleeding, less swelling, faster recovery and no sutures to come out. This is the approach recommended over the older technique, and it is what I have used for years.
Watch the video before you come in. I filmed the whole talk I give in the office, and I would like every patient to see it. A few details have changed since I recorded it. The main one: the laughing gas has replaced the oral medications it mentions. The walkthrough itself is the same one you will get from me in person. Fair warning about the last four minutes: they show half of an actual vasectomy, exactly as it happens. Watch that part if you want to know precisely what you are signing up for, and skip it if you would rather not. Watch the vasectomy video →
One price: $1,000. That covers the procedure itself, the laughing gas, and up to two semen analyses afterward, the second in case the first comes back positive. There is no separate anesthesia charge and no surprise line item.
It is a cash price. I do not bill insurance for vasectomy, so there is no claim, no denial and no bill that shows up months later. HSA accounts work.
Booking takes a $100 fee, and it comes off the price, so the day itself costs $900 more. Your time is valuable, mine is too, and a slot held and then skipped is one another man wanted. The fee is how we both agree the date is real.
One rule protects your included testing: do not check early. The first semen analysis happens no sooner than three months and roughly twenty ejaculations after the procedure. Checked at one month it will almost certainly still be positive, which tells us nothing and uses up your recheck. Give it the full three months and the count you get means something.
Most men stopped reading instruction manuals around puberty. You have two good reasons to make an exception here, namely righty and lefty.
The procedure itself takes less than fifteen minutes.
Plan for it rather than improvising. Men who take the first two days seriously do far better than men who do not.
Ice matters more than men expect. It is the single thing that most changes how the first forty eight hours feel.
The list men actually want, without the euphemisms.
This is where the real failures happen, and they are almost never surgical.
It takes two to three months for the sperm still downstream of the vasectomy to clear out. Until a semen analysis confirms that has happened, you must keep using contraception. Not until you feel recovered. Not until a certain number of weeks have passed. Until the test comes back.
We make the test easy to actually do. The lab order for your semen check is written the day of your procedure, for the laboratory your insurance uses, and your two included analyses run through it. If the lab trip is what will make you procrastinate, we also sell a separate mail-in kit that lets you test from home until your count comes back negative.
Men who skip that test are the men who may end up with a surprise.
Peri Health & Hormones is where Dr. Nelson provides current clinical care in hormones, metabolic health, sexual health, recurrent UTI and selected procedures.
807 E. Pioneer Rd. Suite 105
Draper, UT 84020
Straight answers. No hype. Just practical information you can use.
Direct answers first. The details follow.
Most men tell me afterward that the anxiety was worse than the procedure. With the no-needle anesthetic, the numbing feels like a rubber band snap rather than an injection, and with laughing gas running you are relaxed for the few minutes it takes. During the procedure men feel pressure and a brief pulling sensation rather than sharp pain. The soreness afterward is real but modest: a dull ache for a couple of days that ice and a jock strap handle. The men who struggle are almost always the ones who skipped the ice.
The first two days are for the couch, ice and a jock strap, and men who take them seriously do far better than men who prove something. The first week is light duty: no lifting, no workouts, no long days standing. Most men are back to normal activity after that, golf included. Sex can resume when you are comfortable, typically about a week, but remember you are not sterile yet: sperm remain downstream for two to three months, so contraception continues until the semen test clears you.
Usually it means the pipeline has not fully cleared, not that the vasectomy failed. Sperm downstream of the vasectomy take time and ejaculations to flush out, and some men clear slower than others. Rare, non-moving sperm at twelve weeks generally just earn a repeat test. Motile sperm, actively swimming, are the finding that raises the question of early failure and gets my attention. This is exactly why the test exists, and why my price includes a second analysis: the answer has to come from a count, not a calendar.
Yes, and honesty requires the number: late failure happens in roughly one in two thousand men, when the cut ends manage to reconnect through a process called recanalization. It is rare enough that vasectomy remains the most reliable form of contraception short of abstinence, and far more dependable than the pill in real-world use. Early failure, before the semen test clears you, is the more common story, which is why nobody is sterile until the test says so. After a clear test, the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor.
Last medically reviewed August 2026 by Roscoe S. Nelson, MD, FACS, board-certified urologist.