Shaken, but not spermed.
Justin Allen, a 33-year-old father of two from Horsham, Pennsylvania, got a whole lot of attention on social media Friday when he posted about his experience during an earthquake that hit the East Coast around 10:23 a.m., with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8.
And let’s just say it struck while he was in the middle of a very delicate procedure.
“A FUCKING EARTHQUAKE HAPPENED IN THE MIDDLE OF MY VASECTOMY,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Allen explained to HuffPost on Friday that he had a 10am appointment scheduled at a urology surgery center in Huntingdon Valley, and that it “started out totally normal”.
“I was thankful to have a surgeon that walked me through every single step of the procedure,” Allen wrote. “But about 10 minutes into the 20 minute surgery, the whole room started shaking.”
Allen reacted to the rare event like other East Coasters — by reaching for a logical reason for the surreal situation.
“At first I was wondering if we were close to a train station or if there was something else that could be causing the room to shake like that,” he said. “Either way, I didn’t initially think it was an earthquake because I’d never really felt one before.”
But then his surgeon addressed the elephant in the room.
“When the doctor said ‘is that an earthquake?’ I still thought it was a joke and that he was just trying to lighten the mood,” Allen said. “After a minute or two, when things settled, he resumed the procedure and we all laughed about how we would never forget where we were when this happened.”
Allen said the experience was so wild that he couldn’t help but share it with others, and decided to tweet about it the “moment I got to my phone after the procedure had wrapped up”.
“I definitely thought it would just be something funny for my friends to laugh at,” Allen said. “And it blew up.”
His wife, Bridget Allen, even snapped a few photos of her husband outside of the facility, and couldn’t help but post them on X as well.
Justin Allen said that the experience of going viral has been “overwhelming”, and that he’s had to mute the responses to his post. But he admitted that he’s seen lots of “hilarious” reactions.
Although the situation was definitely an odd one, he said he’s happy that his little Allen is recovering just fine and dandy.
“It was an interesting experience for everyone,” he told HuffPost. “I’m glad everything turned out alright and we all could laugh about it.”