These Three Friends Got Vasectomies Together In Solidarity

If you're going to go through a life-changing process, you might as well as do it with a friend — or two. Though many of us might shy away from talking about health issues with our friends, three guys decided to step up and have their vasectomies on the same day, from the same doctor.

At their wives' encouragement, Paul Diaz, John Lambrechts and Basilio Santangelo decided to get their vasectomies after they had all already started their families.

“We all have two kids around the same age; we all decided we were perfectly happy with the size of our families, so we made a pact to get them done,” Diaz said in a news release. Diaz, Santangelo, and Lambrechts, who call themselves the "vascateers," had their procedures done in back-to-back appointments.

“We talked about it for a while, and at the urging of our wives, we decided to take one for the team,” Lambrechts said.

A vasectomy, a permanent sterilization procedure for men, is considered almost 100% effective as a birth control method. However, according to a report from the United Nations, only 1 in 10 men in the U.S. who are eligible for vasectomies actually get them.

“It’s an option that really deserves more consideration, especially when you compare it to sterilization surgeries for women," Jesse Mills, MD, a urologist and director of the men’s clinic at UCLA, said in the release.

According to BuzzFeed, the men had a mutual friend at UCLA's urology department — Lambrechts' sister, Silvia, who recommended the same doctor for all of them. And so they all got snipped together on December 16, 2016. Since the procedure usually takes about half an hour, Dr. Mills was able to do all three of the vasectomies in one afternoon.

“It was definitely a better experience having your friends go through it with you," Basillo told BuzzFeed. "There is strength in numbers."

Given that the equivalent surgery for women, known as tubal ligation, is a more invasive surgery, these men were glad to step up so that their wives wouldn't have to.

"Our wives had been through so much by giving birth to our children," Santangelo said. “We figured it was a much easier option for us to do this, so we did. It was easy.”