Yet Another Journal: ED, Titan, Gay Sex, Implant Failure, Revision Surgery ...

[boiler_wrangler]

Greetings!

Just read your entire journal from start to finish and wanted to thank you for taking the time over the past few years to document your implant journey. Reading through your experiences, ups and downs, has been invaluable to my journey which is just beginning. I'm on the injections phase of treating ED--about four years now with injections and 20+ years of ED. Like many guys, I find the injections to be inconvenient to plan around and they're changing the shape of my penis, unfortunately.

Starting to explore the implant route with my urologist. I've been encouraged to get the implant for some time, so this seems to be an easy decision but with all the usual trepidation that comes with surgery and going with a last-resort option such as this.

Anyway, appreciate your journal, it answered a ton of questions!

[NYCGay]

Greetings!

Just read your entire journal from start to finish and wanted to thank you for taking the time over the past few years to document your implant journey. Reading through your experiences, ups and downs, has been invaluable to my journey which is just beginning. I'm on the injections phase of treating ED--about four years now with injections and 20+ years of ED. Like many guys, I find the injections to be inconvenient to plan around and they're changing the shape of my penis, unfortunately.

Starting to explore the implant route with my urologist. I've been encouraged to get the implant for some time, so this seems to be an easy decision but with all the usual trepidation that comes with surgery and going with a last-resort option such as this.

Anyway, appreciate your journal, it answered a ton of questions!

Thank you for your kind words.

Well, if you read my journal, you have have probably gathered that I’m happier with the implant than I ever was with the injections. I’m sure injections is the right solution for some guys, but if you find them inconvenient (as I did), and they have also started affecting the shape of your penis, then I definitely think you’re doing the right think in exploring implants.

[NYCGay]

Hernia after revision surgery

I’m scheduled for inguinal hernia repair surgery tomorrow – my fourth surgery in as many months: implant revision in January, cataract surgery on one eye in February, on the other eye in March, no surgeries in April (yay!) and now the hernia repair tomorrow.

When I realized a few weeks ago that I have a hernia that requires surgery, I got worried that it might damage the implant. If I understand everything correctly, the tubing from the pump in the scrotum goes through the very hole in the abdominal wall that has gotten too big, which is what causes the hernia. I just paid out of pocket for the entire implant revision. The thought of perhaps having spent all that money in vain, and then having to go through another revision surgery and recovery period, was all but unbearable.

The first surgeon I went to did nothing to allay my fears. He said he thought he could perform the repair surgery, but he wanted me to know that there would be some risks to the implant. He could say nothing about how large those risks were.

The second surgeon I went to, who has more years under his belt, put me at ease. He was confident he could do the surgery – “Otherwise, I wouldn’t do it” – and the risk of damaging the implant will be very small, he said. He gave a reasonable-sounding explanation for his confidence. The implant tubing is not the only sensitive thing going through that hole in the abdominal wall. There is also the spermatic cord, which contains the blood supply for the testicles and the conduit for the sperm. And all men have testicles, he said, and then added, as a slightly off-color joke to his male nurse, that this is just a medical fact, even if it’s less noticeable in some cases. So the implant tubing is just one more in a bundle of tubes, none of which must be damaged. The surgery will be robotic, with tiny incisions far away from any parts of the implant, and then he’ll go in with blunt robotic arms. If he encounters the implant tubing and it’s in his way, he will gently move it to the side. He really sounded like he knows what he’s doing. I hope that impression will prove to be correct.

I have had inguinal hernia repair twice before in my life: at age two and again at again 45, but the surgeon said that this time, the hernia is a direct result of the implant revision. I had brought him a printout of the medical notes from the revision surgery, since they mention where are the parts of the implant are located. Looking through the notes, he found a section that interested him and read aloud to me: “Blunt dissection was used to make a small opening in the floor of the right inguinal canal. The opening was further dilated to allow the operator’s index finger.” That opening, that’s the hernia! he said.

So I seem to have reached an age where the treatment of one condition leads to the next: the implant revision surgery led to a hernia. The pre-admission testing for the hernia surgery revealed that I have abnormally low levels of a certain kind of white blood cells, which may be a side effect of the medication I’ve been taking for my enlarged prostate – so I’m off that medication, which means that my urinary flow has gotten weaker again. Now I just hope that the hernia surgery won’t damage the implant so that I need another revision. It’s never-ending ...

The hernia looks like a golf ball poking out from my belly, right next to and partly above the root of my penis. From a physical standpoint, it doesn’t prevent me from having sex -- but I hardly have in the weeks since this came on. I have a bit of discomfort and the occasional painful stab unless I wear a hernia belt, and I just don’t feel good about my body naked.

So I’m very much looking forward to getting this done and over with. I’m looking forward to it so much that I’m actually looking forward to the procedure itself: going to the hospital early tomorrow morning, checking in, getting undressed and putting on a gown, talking to the surgeon and the anesthesiologist, getting a needle in my arm, and being put to sleep, waking up and getting a snack to eat, before being sent home, where I will spend the rest of the day, and probably most of the weekend, on the couch -- without any golf ball poking out next to my dick. I’m looking forward to it all.

[Wooody]

Hernia after revision surgery

I’m scheduled for inguinal hernia repair surgery tomorrow – my fourth surgery in as many months: implant revision in January, cataract surgery on one eye in February, on the other eye in March, no surgeries in April (yay!) and now the hernia repair tomorrow.

I went through this last October. I also had an inguinal hernia close to my tubing. Like you, I had a very experienced hernia surgeon who also consulted with my implant surgeon and all went well. The clinical notes from the surgery detail his isolation of the cords you mentioned and also removal of scar tissue from it which was most likely from the IPP tubing being so close to it.

Sounds like you're in good hands. Good luck tomorrow! Will he be using mesh for the repair?