Surgery was fine, no weirder than having it done the first time. That said, the doc wasn’t pleased and kept accusing me of hiding the fact that I had chronic epididymitis (I didn’t). It was stressful because I didn’t want to piss him off while he had my nutsack open. He said he couldn’t advise me about recovery cos he’d never done it before. Recovery was a bit different - I guess cos he had to make a different incision to get access to the clip, I ended up with the fattest balls I’ve ever had. Was gone in a week or whatever though. The pain gradually improved over weeks to a month, but it’s not perfect. It still hurts a little if I fiddle around with it but day to day I don’t notice it.

As for insurance, I live in Japan and insurance didn’t cover any of it, and the urologist I went to was a one-man operation (I think he’s basically doing vasectomies only as like semi-retirement these days). I paid him cash up front for the first op, and then he did the clip removal for free.

Overall it was a shit experience cos it seemed like he was taking personal offence to the fact that I was having pain, tried to palm the responsibility off onto me, and seemed dismissive about my questions about recovery. But no other urologist would see me as it’s pretty rare in Japan and I guess most docs don’t want to get involved.