New in Chicago - The Trajectory of One Guy's ED
Posted: Sun Nov 10, 2019 8:08 pm
Hello All:
Have been aware of and somewhat following this site for a couple years. Figured it's a good time to get involved, hopefully less about me and maybe more about hoping my experiences may help someone else down the line. The story and the details are all a lot more involved than I can realistically paint the picture here, but for what it may be worth, here's the (not so) short version:
I just turned 54. Started experiencing signs of ED at age of 35. Libido was absolutely never a problem. Last child was born, had vasectomy, and within that next year or two the reality of ED was just with me. It wasn't consistently bad, but it was definitely there. Had Viagra prescribed. It worked really nicely for a few years, maybe 5-7 years where it was helpful and allowed reasonably normal sex. I did notice the efficacy waning. So the Viagra (and Cialis) doses ramped up over several years. The uptick in dose was, over several years, accompanied by a steadily flattening efficacy. So dose of PDE5 went higher but hardness of erections did not maintain any kind of material improvement. Higher doses resulted in less effectiveness over time. Divorced my ex-wife and this had believe it or not nothing to do with the ED. She was never particularly motivated around sex, though, and it was literally always on me to initiate, take charge, etc, and sex just was not particularly important to her. Sex was always important to me. Not for its own sake (well ok, sometimes for its own sake, for sure) but on the whole, I just always wanted a very active, very imaginative sex life with a person who had a similar vibe and desire. As to my first marriage, I'm not saying these psycho-social factors around her lack of interest and the discrepancies in our desire had nothing to do with my ED. It's entirely possible they did, or that at minimum those issues overlapped with, and even exacerbated my underlying, inevitable organic/physical ED factors. Anyway...spent about ten years messing around with PDE5's then in 2011 sought out Trimix. In the period of time where I sought out Trimix, I had met someone new and she's a girl with what I thought to be the impossible - a libido which matched mine. An extremely highly sexual woman and a woman I clicked with mentally and emotionally and in all the other ways which matter beyond sex, too. I knew I had to do something aggressive and I was beyond excited to try injections.
Injections turned out to be pure absolutely ridiculous magic and for a good long period of years. The first combination I was prescribed was called Mix #5. I think these are more or less common names for the same concentrations mixed by different pharmacies. My pharmacy uses the following blends:
Papaverine Phentolamine Prostaglandin (Alprostadil)
mix #5 30mg 1mg 10 mcg's
mix #8 30mg 2mg 20 mcg's
mix #9 30mg 4mg 40 mcg's
mix #13 30mg 6mg 60 mcg's
mix #16 30mg 6mg 100 mcg's
I was on mix #5 for about 4.5 years. It produced nearly instant, absolute iron-hard erections with 30-40 units injected. They lasted forever. I am talking about teenager type rock hard maximum rigidity erections which would not remotely soften for at least an hour. Often more. There were times we could have sex nonstop for 90+ minutes approaching 2 hours sometimes. Complete sexual Olympics. I could have multiple orgasms spanning 1-2 hours and not lose the erection and I don't even know how to explain it other than to say it was a dream I never wanted to wake up from. Luckiest guy on earth stuff. We drove each other to blissful exhaustion for years and years.
But - over the 4 years I was on mix #5 the volume of injection required to maintain the sexual nirvana gradually ticked upwards. When I got up around 90-100 units of mix #5 (which still produced the magic and long lasting erections) they moved me up to mix #8. I'll shorten the story here but suffice to say that while I was on mix #5 for 4 years, I moved very steadily and very frustratingly through the next 3 higher potency mixes over the next 4 years. The pattern became...move to higher potency mix...inject a steadily increasing volume of the higher potency mix...and receive "ok" but not amazing erections. The quality of erections steadily slid backward. They were less rigid, slower to occur, and they certainly did not last as long. All of this is occurring with the same highly sexual woman I mentioned above. We are rabid for each other over the entire decade I'm describing above, but the chemicals are just decreasing and decreasing in terms of effect. At the same time, I'm more and more finding that I'm bruising more easily and frequently at injections sites, I feel stringy bumpy tissue developing at injection sites, and the prostaglandin burn is getting a bit crazy. Just a lot of persistent tenderness and pain through my penis and for a long time after injecting (days). I'm injecting 2-3 times per week most of this period. Have been piggybacking Viagra for several years in conjunction with the Trimix and so that became the new norm, too, over time...pop the blue pill...inject...hope for the best...more often than not, receive an erection technically capable of penetrative sex but for briefer and briefer sessions and even positions started to need to be adapted. For example, gravity worked against us if she was on top...things seemed to work better in missionary where my penis was the lowest point on the map and blood had nowhere else to move toward.
Present day I am just short of 9 years total on Trimix and I'm on mix #13. This mix lasted me less than a year and went from 30 to now 95 units. More pain than ever. Erection quality half-assed and unpredictable. The girl is my wife now and she's still magic. She is supportive and we've been 100% open and honest about every shred of everything over the years. She's willing to adapt and settle for (she would say "other things"...I would say "for less"). But the problem is...once you have the experiences I'm sharing, above? You cannot un-know the amazing things your penis is capable of accomplishing. You just can't. It's something you can't help but want to return to, to at least approximate as closely as humanly possible. And so, ultimately, right now I know I've got to either
1) endure the transition to the final Trimix weapon (mix #16) and fight through the increasing injection pain and frustration and negligible/so-so erections for the next year...or
2) just say F-it...time for the implant.
So I'm scheduled for next week 11/18. Going to do the Titan with Dr. Levine here in Chicago at Rush University Medical Center. I've got great insurance paying for this at 90% and I figured...what in the hell am I waiting for? Seriously. I got almost a decade of, mostly, the kind of crazy, fun, sustained, confident sex I thought you only find in high grade porn, and I've got it in the context of a loving, wonderful partner and wife in all the categories other than sex. So why pretend sex should take a back seat, and why do that thing where you equivocate and start telling yourself "oh, that's ok....". All I can share is my experience and mindset, and my mindset (for me...I'm not judging or expecting anyone else to think or feel the same)...my mindset is, no...NO..."ok" is actually NOT OK. Or..."ok" for the next year, with an utter inevitability of Trimix reaching the end of its run...enough is just enough at some point. I'm healthy enough today, the insurance will fortunately pay most of the implant costs...for me I couldn't be more excited. I'm giving myself what I believe, on balance, is my best opportunity to have the best erection and the best experiences with it which modern medicine and science allows today.
Anyway...sorry to rattle on and on here. I've been off in the shadows reading posts here for long enough to say that there's a lot of guys who have inspired me and helped me think through things and see hope. I'm grateful for this community of people supporting and trying their best to help one another. I hope I can do the same in the future. Thanks for listening. Happy to answer any questions if I can be of any help.
Have been aware of and somewhat following this site for a couple years. Figured it's a good time to get involved, hopefully less about me and maybe more about hoping my experiences may help someone else down the line. The story and the details are all a lot more involved than I can realistically paint the picture here, but for what it may be worth, here's the (not so) short version:
I just turned 54. Started experiencing signs of ED at age of 35. Libido was absolutely never a problem. Last child was born, had vasectomy, and within that next year or two the reality of ED was just with me. It wasn't consistently bad, but it was definitely there. Had Viagra prescribed. It worked really nicely for a few years, maybe 5-7 years where it was helpful and allowed reasonably normal sex. I did notice the efficacy waning. So the Viagra (and Cialis) doses ramped up over several years. The uptick in dose was, over several years, accompanied by a steadily flattening efficacy. So dose of PDE5 went higher but hardness of erections did not maintain any kind of material improvement. Higher doses resulted in less effectiveness over time. Divorced my ex-wife and this had believe it or not nothing to do with the ED. She was never particularly motivated around sex, though, and it was literally always on me to initiate, take charge, etc, and sex just was not particularly important to her. Sex was always important to me. Not for its own sake (well ok, sometimes for its own sake, for sure) but on the whole, I just always wanted a very active, very imaginative sex life with a person who had a similar vibe and desire. As to my first marriage, I'm not saying these psycho-social factors around her lack of interest and the discrepancies in our desire had nothing to do with my ED. It's entirely possible they did, or that at minimum those issues overlapped with, and even exacerbated my underlying, inevitable organic/physical ED factors. Anyway...spent about ten years messing around with PDE5's then in 2011 sought out Trimix. In the period of time where I sought out Trimix, I had met someone new and she's a girl with what I thought to be the impossible - a libido which matched mine. An extremely highly sexual woman and a woman I clicked with mentally and emotionally and in all the other ways which matter beyond sex, too. I knew I had to do something aggressive and I was beyond excited to try injections.
Injections turned out to be pure absolutely ridiculous magic and for a good long period of years. The first combination I was prescribed was called Mix #5. I think these are more or less common names for the same concentrations mixed by different pharmacies. My pharmacy uses the following blends:
Papaverine Phentolamine Prostaglandin (Alprostadil)
mix #5 30mg 1mg 10 mcg's
mix #8 30mg 2mg 20 mcg's
mix #9 30mg 4mg 40 mcg's
mix #13 30mg 6mg 60 mcg's
mix #16 30mg 6mg 100 mcg's
I was on mix #5 for about 4.5 years. It produced nearly instant, absolute iron-hard erections with 30-40 units injected. They lasted forever. I am talking about teenager type rock hard maximum rigidity erections which would not remotely soften for at least an hour. Often more. There were times we could have sex nonstop for 90+ minutes approaching 2 hours sometimes. Complete sexual Olympics. I could have multiple orgasms spanning 1-2 hours and not lose the erection and I don't even know how to explain it other than to say it was a dream I never wanted to wake up from. Luckiest guy on earth stuff. We drove each other to blissful exhaustion for years and years.
But - over the 4 years I was on mix #5 the volume of injection required to maintain the sexual nirvana gradually ticked upwards. When I got up around 90-100 units of mix #5 (which still produced the magic and long lasting erections) they moved me up to mix #8. I'll shorten the story here but suffice to say that while I was on mix #5 for 4 years, I moved very steadily and very frustratingly through the next 3 higher potency mixes over the next 4 years. The pattern became...move to higher potency mix...inject a steadily increasing volume of the higher potency mix...and receive "ok" but not amazing erections. The quality of erections steadily slid backward. They were less rigid, slower to occur, and they certainly did not last as long. All of this is occurring with the same highly sexual woman I mentioned above. We are rabid for each other over the entire decade I'm describing above, but the chemicals are just decreasing and decreasing in terms of effect. At the same time, I'm more and more finding that I'm bruising more easily and frequently at injections sites, I feel stringy bumpy tissue developing at injection sites, and the prostaglandin burn is getting a bit crazy. Just a lot of persistent tenderness and pain through my penis and for a long time after injecting (days). I'm injecting 2-3 times per week most of this period. Have been piggybacking Viagra for several years in conjunction with the Trimix and so that became the new norm, too, over time...pop the blue pill...inject...hope for the best...more often than not, receive an erection technically capable of penetrative sex but for briefer and briefer sessions and even positions started to need to be adapted. For example, gravity worked against us if she was on top...things seemed to work better in missionary where my penis was the lowest point on the map and blood had nowhere else to move toward.
Present day I am just short of 9 years total on Trimix and I'm on mix #13. This mix lasted me less than a year and went from 30 to now 95 units. More pain than ever. Erection quality half-assed and unpredictable. The girl is my wife now and she's still magic. She is supportive and we've been 100% open and honest about every shred of everything over the years. She's willing to adapt and settle for (she would say "other things"...I would say "for less"). But the problem is...once you have the experiences I'm sharing, above? You cannot un-know the amazing things your penis is capable of accomplishing. You just can't. It's something you can't help but want to return to, to at least approximate as closely as humanly possible. And so, ultimately, right now I know I've got to either
1) endure the transition to the final Trimix weapon (mix #16) and fight through the increasing injection pain and frustration and negligible/so-so erections for the next year...or
2) just say F-it...time for the implant.
So I'm scheduled for next week 11/18. Going to do the Titan with Dr. Levine here in Chicago at Rush University Medical Center. I've got great insurance paying for this at 90% and I figured...what in the hell am I waiting for? Seriously. I got almost a decade of, mostly, the kind of crazy, fun, sustained, confident sex I thought you only find in high grade porn, and I've got it in the context of a loving, wonderful partner and wife in all the categories other than sex. So why pretend sex should take a back seat, and why do that thing where you equivocate and start telling yourself "oh, that's ok....". All I can share is my experience and mindset, and my mindset (for me...I'm not judging or expecting anyone else to think or feel the same)...my mindset is, no...NO..."ok" is actually NOT OK. Or..."ok" for the next year, with an utter inevitability of Trimix reaching the end of its run...enough is just enough at some point. I'm healthy enough today, the insurance will fortunately pay most of the implant costs...for me I couldn't be more excited. I'm giving myself what I believe, on balance, is my best opportunity to have the best erection and the best experiences with it which modern medicine and science allows today.
Anyway...sorry to rattle on and on here. I've been off in the shadows reading posts here for long enough to say that there's a lot of guys who have inspired me and helped me think through things and see hope. I'm grateful for this community of people supporting and trying their best to help one another. I hope I can do the same in the future. Thanks for listening. Happy to answer any questions if I can be of any help.
