The surgery itself will take place on Tuesday, Jan 20th. From there, I’m planning on staying in Atlanta for a week and have an in-person follow up appointment with Dr Hakky on Jan 26 to see how I’m healing.
How did I get here?
Here’s the cliff notes version: throughout my entire life, I’ve always struggled with maintaining my erections. Since my first sexual experiences in high school, I could sense something just wasn’t right - I’d be with a partner, turned on, hormones raging, and suddenly erect and ready to rock - but then fairly quickly (and sometimes even DURING penetrative sex) I’d notice the erection start to weaken - and in many cases, fade out completely.
This got worse as I had more partners in college and beyond: and performance anxiety started to make matters even worse on top of that! Because of the increasing performance anxiety I started to become convinced that the issue was all in my head. I worked with a sex therapist for awhile right after college - and while it was definitely helpful for my confidence and to get out of my head a bit, I still was dealing with the same ED issues.
Eventually I tried all the pills - Cialis seemed to work for a little bit (it worked better for me than Viagra) but was still very much hit or miss for me overall.
Finally, in my early thirties, I started reading about penile implants. Like many of us here, I initially didn’t even know such an option existed. It was only a matter of time before I was watching all of Paul Perito’s “Meet The Penis” series, doing my own research on inflatable and malleable implants, and of course - reading FrankTalk journals fairly religiously.
I want to pause for a moment and really emphasize how critical this forum has been for me throughout all this time of researching a preparing for this step. I read SO MANY journals and experiences - inflatable journals AND malleable ones. And not just as a way to better understand how the devices functioned / strengths and weaknesses / etc: I really felt a true sense of community knowing that I wasn’t alone in this struggle and that there were other guys out there fighting this same battle. It’s been absolutely huge for me. I was a long time FrankTalk reader before actually joining the forum, which I finally made an account this past year in 2025 to start asking some of my own questions and connecting with folks here.
Fast forward to August, 2025 - I had my first virtual consultation with Dr Hakky. I vibed right away with his style - Ive written about this a bit in previous posts. It’s very obvious that he really cares about his patients and their outcomes, and it’s also clear that he genuinely loves the world of urology and surgery.
A month later in early September, I flew out to Atlanta to be evaluated by him in person. We performed a penile ultrasound and learned that I had a venous leak (likely my entire life) that has made it very difficult for me to maintain my erections. Blood flows into my penis just fine - but it leaves my penis fast.
This diagnosis was honestly one of the most validating things for me: to finally take a breath and realize that it wasn’t in my head - that all these years, I really DID have something physiologic going on - it was such a relief in itself. That day, I decided I wanted to move forward with the implant.
From there, I had two more virtual consults with Dr Hakky - one in October to discuss the merits of the inflatable vs malleable, pros and cons, etc. Then we had another in early December where we decided to proceed with a malleable implant (more on my reasoning coming up).
After setting my surgery date for January 20th, I went and got my lab work done + EKG. Everything came back fine, and I was officially cleared for surgery in early Jan. I’m also VERY fortunate to have good health insurance (I have a good plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield through my employer) and so the procedure is covered.
So, why did I choose a malleable?
Ultimately, it comes down to knowing myself and the things I value most. The biggest factors were: I’m in my early thirties, I’m generally a very risk-averse person, I like the simplicity of the malleable device, and although I’m fortunate to have excellent health insurance right now, I might find myself switching employers down the line and there’s no guarantee my next insurance plan will cover future revisions. Even with all of those things - I was actually VERY close to proceeding with the Coloplast Titan - my thought process was “let’s try out the inflatable and switch to a malleable if the device fails too early”. But after sitting with things for awhile, I realized that the malleable is just a much better fit for my personality and the things I value as a patient.
But make no mistake - with the malleable, there are drawbacks that I’m prepared to have to accept and adapt to. Size loss is usually more prevalent with malleable devices - I’m already on the smaller side (5 inches stretched length
, 5 inches girth)! And of course, you need to learn to adapt to having a rigid rod in your penis / how to stow it / adapt to it as part of your body. These are all challenges that I’m anticipating. But I’m ready for it - because above all else, I want and deserve to have the sex life I’ve always wanted.What malleable am I getting?
At this stage, I’m 99% certain it will be a Rigi10. I chose the Rigi10 on account of its rigidity - even at lower girth rod sizes. It’s also the device that Hakky tends to prefer within the malleable realm. The drawback with the Rigi10 is that it is typically a bit more difficult to bend - it’s not as difficult as the Tactra, but certainly not as straightforward as the Genesis. Right now, this is the one area I’m most anxious about - I’ve never really read any posts about guys struggling to bend the Genesis. But the Rigi10 complaints about it being difficult to bend are fairly common to come across. Dr Hakky and I are planning to mitigate some of this risk by purposefully going with a lower girth rod (likely maxing out at 11mm, even if I can accommodate 12mm or 13mm). But still, that doesn’t automatically guarantee that it will be a breeze to bend it.
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Anyhow, to close out this first post: it’s currently almost 1 AM for me on Jan 19th. I’m really looking forward to sharing with the forum as transparently as possible about my journey - the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m more than happy to answer any questions as best I can throughout, so please feel free to reach out.
Again - HUGE thanks to everyone on this forum that have given me advice / feedback, and for everyone who has posted their experiences. It’s meant so much to me.
Wish me luck y’all, I’ll be parachuting into the OR in approximately ~36 hours
