Yet Another Journal: Replacement surgery cancelled

[Discovernew]

You look amazing. May i ask whats your size? Bone pressed

Thank you! Haven’t measured my length in a long time, but was about 7” x 5.7” after the surgery. The girth slowly increased to 6”. No point in measuring myself now; the device is kaput and can’t be inflated. Eagerly (and just slightly nervously) looking forward to my revision surgery next week.

Did you keep all your same size from before the surgery or did you lose some after the implant?

[NYCGay]

Did you keep all your same size from before the surgery or did you lose some after the implant?

I didn't lose any length, but I lost a full inch in girth, from 6.7" to 5.7". Later, my girth slowly increased and was 6" at the time of my implant failure two months ago.

I didn't really mind losing that girth. My pre-op dick had kind of a weird shape, with the shaft bulging out on one side, which gave me all that extra girth. Post-op, that bulge was largely gone.

But there is another aspect of the shape of my post-op dick that I'm not crazy about: the shaft is now flat rather than round. It's like two cylinders pressed together and wrapped in skin (which is pretty much what it is). My old dick felt rounder in my hand. I would have preferred keeping that roundness, but I've been happy to give it up in exchange for being able to get hard.

You can see pics of the shape of my dick in my journal:
Pre-op: https://www.franktalk.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16918&start=90
Post-op: https://www.franktalk.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16918&start=180

[NYCGay]

1 week till replacement surgery

So now there are only seven days to go before I will lie down on the operation table, so that Dr. Eid can cut me open again, remove my failed implant and put in a new one. (This time, I’m going with the Titan with the Classic pump, which he says has proven much more durable than the Titan OTR I have now.)

I’m still trying to figure out, at least roughly, how much this is going to cost me. It’s starting to come into focus:

• Dr. Eid’s fee I will have to pay entirely out of pocket, since he’s not in-network with my current insurance.
• The device itself (which at a hefty $9,500 is the biggest line item) should be covered by Coloplast’s lifetime warranty. I will still have to pay for it upfront, but should get reimbursed once Coloplast has examined the explanted device. (I hope there is no hidden catch.)
• Hospital fees and anesthesiologist: Unclear. My insurance company Cigna says both that they will cover it and that they won’t, but refuses to give me either statement in writing. To protect myself against against surprises, I will have to pay out of pocket and self-submit a claim after the procedure. If I’m lucky, they’ll pay something.

I’m eagerly looking forward to the surgery – but now that it’s so close, I also feel apprehensive. I know that Dr. Eid is a leading expert in the field, with a remarkably low rate of infections, but still: there is always a risk, and just because things went well the first time around is of course no guarantee that they will go well this time too.

And even if everything goes well, there is still the recovery period to get through. Recovery after revision is supposed to be easier than the recovery after the original surgery – but just how much easier?

Dr. Eid’s Nurse Practitioner Timothy prescribed three different kinds of pain-killers for me, including OxyCodone. The pharmacy balked at filling prescriptions for two controlled pain-killers at the same time, but Timothy said it would be good for me to have them at hand and called the pharmacy and got them to approve it. Clearly, some level of pain is to be expected.

I don’t mean to scare anyone off from getting an implant; I didn’t have any severe pain after my original implant surgery, but there was a lot of discomfort, and for the first couple of weeks, life pretty much circled around my recovery. (I was working, but from home.) It was difficult, or often impossible to find a comfortable position for my dick. I remember sitting in bed, working on my laptop, naked from the waist down, with a heat pad over my dick.

Then there were the twice-daily hot baths that Dr. Eid recommends you to take while cycling the device, which he famously tells you to start doing very early: on the third day after the surgery, you unwrap the dressing, revealing your new implanted cock (which may be a bit bruised), pull out the catheter, take a percocet, lie down in hot, hot water, and pump up the device as hard as you can bear. (The heat made me dizzy, so I ended up putting and ice bag on top of my head: cool head, hot dick.)

I do remember those cycling sessions as being rather painful, but handling pain is so much easier when you have control over it: as soon as I deflated, the pain would subside, and knowing that, I could make myself stand it one more minute, and then another one, and then one more ...

I’m so eager to see my dick hard again, even if it hurts, so it was a bit of a disappointment to read Dr. Eid’s instructions and discover that they are different for replacement surgery: the hot baths are still there, but no cycling before the follow up visit two weeks after the surgery. I will adhere to whatever Dr. Eid says, but I will ask him if I can’t pump it up – just once – to check that everything works and see how it looks. Hey, I miss my hard-on; it would feel so good to say hello to it again.

In a bit of bad timing, I have family from overseas coming to visit me and my husband in our New York apartment over the holidays – family with whom I will not discuss my penile implant. They are arriving just six days after my surgery. Certainly not ideal timing, but I don’t want to put the surgery off. I will just have to make it work. I will need an excuse to explain all those hot baths and why I can’t go to the gym, and why I might need to go and lie down sometimes. I plan to say that I’ve had a procedure to shrink my enlarged prostate (which in reality I’m going to have later this winter). It should sound reasonable enough.

Just so there is no misunderstanding: regardless of any apprehension I might feel about the surgery, the recovery, and how to deal with my family visit, I’m very much looking forward to doing this. I want to have a functioning implant again.

[NYCGay]

Four days till replacement surgery

Today, I picked up all the medications from the pharmacy: antibiotics, laxative, disinfecting soap, three different pain-killers. Time to read up on what should be taken with food and what on and empty stomach.

I also got a Show & Tell from GoodWood, who was kind enough to stop by and let me feel his Titan Classic pump. I agree with him: the Classic pump feels more natural, less man-made, than the Titan OTR pump I have now. (He has a great-looking cock, by the way.)

My sex life has now been pretty much on hold for two months. My main guy in the side, a lively, handsome guy in his mid-thirties, whom I have mentioned in earlier posts, texts me now and then, often in all caps, that I need to fuck him. Now. Because he misses me and my cock – which he, with flattering exaggeration, calls matchless.

I haven’t hooked up with him since September, and it will probably be another month before I’m back in action, and, based on my experience after my first surgery, it might still be too painful for me to fuck at full force for several months. Also, it will take time for my pubes to grow back, and, no, I never shave my pubes.

I don’t want him to get the impression that I’ve grown tired of him, which would probable cause him to cool on me. So I finally told him, via text, two days ago: I have an implant; it broke; I’m scheduled to have it replaced.

I was certain that he wouldn’t say anything negative about it. But even if he wouldn’t say it, and perhaps not even be fully aware of it, it’s of course possible that he would harbor some degree of disappointment that my impressive, never-failing erections are not my body’s automatic reaction to his presence, and that my sexual prowess, which he seems so turned on by, is in fact based on a mechanical device. If so, I would certainly not hold it against him. I do not presume to dictate what he should or shouldn’t feel.

But his first reactions were encouraging. First: “Omg are you okay?” Immediately followed by: “What’s the healing time?”

I think he will probably enjoy getting pounded by me as much as he has before, regardless of how my erections are generated.

And whatever the outcome, I feel good I told him. It’s one thing keeping it hidden from one-night stands, but this is a guy who, though he’s not my husband or boyfriend, I nonetheless feel close to. I don’t want to hide something so basic about myself from him forever. My attitude at this point in my life is: Take it or leave it; this is me, I have an implant; that’s just the way it is, and if he, or anyone else, would have preferred another version of me, who doesn’t have an implant but who got hard anyway, well, that version doesn’t exist.

To me, this feels like a healthy kind of self-confidence that I’m happy I’ve come to.

[NYCGay]

Night before replacement surgery

I tell myself that I have no reason to be nervous – but I am: nervous and irritable. I just want this to be over already. Or rather, I wish I didn’t have to go through it again at all, especially not right now, when I have family coming to stay with us over the holidays. (Well, I have no one but myself to blame for that piece of bad timing.) But I also feel kind of cheated. I didn’t even get five years out of my implant. Didn’t I have the right to expect it to last longer than that?

Some of my annoyance probably stems from the fact that this replacement will be so costly for me. It would have been a lot cheaper if I had waited till the new year, when I will have another insurance company, and had found myself a New Jersey surgeon in-network with my new policy, instead of going back to Dr. Eid, who is not in-network for me now, nor will be next year. Part of me thinks I should have done that – surely there are some competent, high-volume implant surgeons in New Jersey – but if that’s what I had decided to do, I would be second-guessing that decision too. And the procedure is tomorrow, and I paid everything online today, so there really is no going back. Just as well; as I said, I just want this to be over already.

I guess I also resent the aging process. Tomorrow’s procedure is just the first of no less than four surgical procedures I will have this winter. Next one up is cataract surgery on one eye, scheduled for January 12. Then I need to have another procedure to shrink my prostate. (I already had one four years ago.) And finally cataract surgery on the other eye. I’m looking forward to the results of all these procedures: being able to get hard again, being able to see better, being able to empty my bladder more easily. But I like to tell myself that I’m in good health: I work out; I’m reasonably fit; I have no problem sprinting up stairs. But at the same time, my sixty-year-old body clearly require a lot of maintenance: four surgeries in just one winter.

I’m sorry for this downer of a post. I just felt like venting a little. I think I will be in a better mood tomorrow, when I have the surgery behind me.

[GoodWood]

Hang in there. Soon you will be on the other side of this. And soon you’ll be on the other side of those other procedures as well.

But one thing at a time. Ice ice ice ice ice. Then hot baths.

Best wishes to you.

[NYCGay]

Hang in there. Soon you will be on the other side of this. And soon you’ll be on the other side of those other procedures as well.

But one thing at a time. Ice ice ice ice ice. Then hot baths.

Best wishes to you.

Thank you! I appreciate your encouragement.

[NYCGay]

Surgery cancelled

I had set three different alarms, to be sure not to oversleep. I got up, showered and cleaned my groin carefully with the special soap I’ve been given to use for three days before the surgery. I got dressed, looked through my notes of things to discuss with Dr. Eid before going into the operating room. Then I saw I had received a phone message. Dr. Eid is not feeling well and is cancelling all his surgeries today.

I’m grateful that he doesn’t soldier on and operates if he’s not feeling well. But it is a great disappointment to have to put this off at this point, when I’m sitting here ready to call a cab to go to the hospital. And it starts feeling like a pattern. The prostate procedure I was supposed to have in August with another doctor got postponed, due to some administrative issue between the doctor and the hospital. I haven’t been able to fit it in yet; the implant failure got in beetween. Now I might have to decide whether to move my upcoming cataract surgery to do the implant replacement instead. This was really a big disappointment.

[cbinspok]

Ah geeeez NYC
Sorry for this event. Was thinking of you this morning.
Here you go again, keep us in the loop, we keep you in our thoughts.
Hugs

[UpNorth]

Wow. Thats a bummer.