FrankTalk.org

Hello all! I have to say, I wish I stumbled upon this website sooner. It would have made things a lot more easier to handle just knowing that I wasn't alone.
I'm 24 years old, and I've had ED since I was at least 19. I've probably had it before then too, but I wasn't very sexually active until about that age to figure out that something was wrong. My case of ED has to do with Venous Leakage which was most likely from physical trauma due to sports. (I am SOOO making my son wear a cup while playing soccer, if I ever have one) It stinks because while the oral medication would give me ample bloodflow to start a nice firm erection, in certain positions, I would lose it even with a strong dose of Viagra. It's basically like pumping air into a tire that has a significant hole in it.

So yeah, my college years rolled by and I missed out on some wonderful opportunities. But it was not a completely negative experience. I think I've grown and matured as a man in so many ways because of my difficulties. I've learned to enjoy all the small things along with the big. I don't take anything for granted, and I certainly think I am a way more understanding of a person after going through this whole ordeal.

Anyways, I'm done with the "growing" now. I've come to the decision to explore the "Final Frontier" and join your ranks. It's time to move on from this problem, and truly begin my sexual life. After making this decision I was so incredibly excited, but as the days got closer and closer to the surgery, I started to get scared. I'm not really afraid of infection or the surgery itself. My main concern was the fact that once you take this path, it's set in stone. I really have no reason to think I would ever want to go back to a life where I couldn't even sustain an erection while standing up. Yet, I am a man that likes to keep options, so I still questioned my decision.

Well I would like to say a big fat THANK YOU to everyone on this message board. I came upon it last night, and many of my fears were put to rest. Because you are all so open to share your experiences, I'm able to very confidently go through with this procedure, and I really think my life is going to change for the very best. I wish I could fast forward to 6 weeks from now so I could already see what this baby is like! Haha.

I know I have a bit of pain in my near future, but after having an ultra sound on my penis a few years back with induced erection (wow that was extremely painful, and the injection to make the erection go away? OWWWW) and also all of the emotional baggage that comes along with this situation. I've decided this surgery is worth it. I hope things work out and I can preach yet another success story to calm those who are still teetering on making the big jump.

The doctor who is performing the surgery is Dr. Hossein Sadeghi. He's supposed to be one of the top dogs in this field in my area (north east, USA).
He's also the guy that people go to when other doctors messed up the procedure. So I do have confidence in my success. Either way, I won't truly get past this problem without taking the risk. Anyways, thanks again to you all! You don't know how much it means to some people who finally find a place of belonging.

On my way to my surgery now!
Wish me luck!

Saffron!
Wow - you move fast! good luck. Let us know how it comes out. You probably won't be back on here for a few days...but keep us posted!
Thanks for joining our little band of brothers!
Paul

x

Hey everybody!

So far, so good with the surgery and recovery!

The overall painfactor isn't as bad as I thought. There were a few short moments that were indeed very painful, but the general soreness is not too bothersome. I've never had a catheter before, so that really was the source of most of my pain. The day of the surgery, it felt like anytime I moved at all, I was getting pinched from the inside of the penis, which obviously isn't very pleasant.

I was taken into the operating room around 1:30 on Thursday, and was awoken from my anesthetic slumber around 3:30-4. Recovery room was kinda chaotic, because I was still confused as to what was going on (one second I'm having a convo with the surgeons pre-op, the next second, I'm being wheeled into the recovery room, post-op, where it's all noisy and crazy).

I paid a bit of extra money for a nice private room once I got out of the general recovery place. The nurses treated me so well, and I had my own tv, and it was a generally nice experience. A lot of the staff seemed curious and came to talk to me about my condition because of my young age. I was more than happy to talk about it for some reason. It felt very liberating to me to be able to talk about it with these people since uh... They know the operation I had already. So the cat was kinda out of the bag and I could just be myself and explain everything in full honesty. I'm sure many of you know, there's not a lot of time when you feel like you are completely honest either with yourself or with other people when you're dealing with ED.

So anyways, back to the pain. As I said earlier, the catheter was the big pain causer. Once the catheter was removed, I was very very comfortable. The actual removal of the catheter was probably the most painful experience of my life, but luckily it lasted only about 10 seconds. They removed it at about 6:30am on Friday. I didn't get much sleep Thursday night, but once they removed the catheter I was able to relax and rest a lot easier.

The only other painful experience was trying to pee the 200 CC's that the nurses requested. Basically, don't beat yourself up if you can't do it the first or second time you try. I wasn't able to pee until noon on Friday (almost 6 hours after the catheter removal). Make sure to drink a ton of fluids, and try to walk around a bit before attempting to urinate.

By the time I urinated, the blood drain pouch thingy was already removed (was also quite painful but lasted as long as ripping a piece of tape)

So since everything was removed, and I finally proved I could pee without a catheter (can you tell how much I didn't like that thing? Ha.) they discharged me at about 1pm.
I'm staying with my parents for the week so that they could coddle me a bit over the weekend. I've been able to walk around fairly well as long as I walk like a penguin. Peeing is a bit painful, but I found that if I wait until I REALLY have to pee bad, then it is not as painful. I guess when the stream comes out more naturally it doesn't hurt as much.

I plan on taking percocets until tomorrow morning (Sunday). I hear that the earlier you're able to switch over to Motrin, the better, because it reduces the swelling, whereas Percocets only take away the pain. And I guess faster swelling reduction means faster overall recovery.

Oh yeah... I did notice a slight reduction in length, but it implant hasn't really been activated yet. I have the AMS model and was told that most of the length would be recovered eventually once the pump was used enough, so I'm not too worried about it. I did gain some girth as well, so that was interesting to see.

Overall, I'm definitely glad that I finally got the ball rolling on this device. I'm very excited to experience life with my new toy once it's activated! As for now, I'll just be chilling on the couch watching a ton of netflix

Oh yeah, sleeping on a couch/chair with reclining feature seems to be more comfortable than my regular bed as of right now.

Sorry if my post seems disorganized and very out of order. I'm kinda just typing what I remember as it comes to me. Thanks for the good wishes, and I'll keep you guys updated! If anybody has any questions, feel free to ask! Whether you've had the procedure already and are curious, or you're about to get it done and are concerned, please ask away!

Saffron:

Go guy! I'm so pleased things are on the mend and surgery was "good" and is behind you. Welcome to the site. You openness on the process is great and helps all of us understand. My ED is from surgery for PCa and now I'm with pill and pump and doing OK most of the time. Your honesty really helps me understand if I need to go to the final frontier. I look forward to further updates. The whole site will celebrate with you in 6 weeks when they turn you on and turn you loose.

Take it easy and let mom pamper you. The journey has begun and a new world awaits!!

Regards,

Dick

x

Saffron....thanks so much for your step-by-step account. I am planning to take the final step too. Already made contact with the physicians office and got paper work done. Dont know when the surgery will be yet. Not even sure if he will approve it. But i think he will cause nothing else has given me a hard enough erection for penetration.

I understand the combination of anticipation, doubt, eagerness, and fear that you experienced before the surgery. Gulp. I am right there, man.

I am happy for you....successful surgery..and continuing improvement. Hang in there and keep us informed. Bet you cant wait to play with the new, working toy.....or have someone else play with it.

Jerry

Hello once again!

So today is Tuesday, which is the 5th day since surgery (if you count the day of operation).

Just as a warning, there's a lot of bathroom talk involved in this post. If you don't really feel like reading a bit of silly, but possibly useful info, then stop reading about 4 paragraphs after this.

If you remember, I said I was going to try and switch from the Percocet painkillers to Ibuprofen on Sunday so I could get rid of the swelling more quickly.
That didn't go so well, as I had quite a bit of pain. So much so, that I could not urinate again until I was back on the Percocet. To be fair, I was "spoiling" myself by taking two pills every 4 hours, so that I really hadn't had the chance to experience major pain until I tried to make the switch. SHEESH that was a rude awakening for sure!

Anyways, since then I've been weening myself off the percocet by stretching out the time between doses, and also decreasing the amount of pills I take each time. So I began taking two pills every 8 hours on Sunday. Then on Monday I took two pills to start out the morning (around 8 AM), waited 8 hours, took ONE more pill, waited another 4 hours (about 4pm at this point), and then took two ibuprofen pills instead. Then after another 4 hours (around midnight), I took another percocet. The pain was much less harsh this way, and I'm successfully weening myself off the prescription medicine.

One thing you have to understand is that you'll always have some general discomfort and soreness, but for me, I just need to be able to urinate. If I'm having so much pain that I cannot urinate, then there's a problem and I need to change my med schedule or dosage. My pain has been bearable enough for me to urinate since switching my schedule around on Sunday, thankfully. On Monday, the swelling went down pretty considerably, and has doneso yet again today.

Another note on the general soreness, you may find a special position of extreme comfort to retreat to when you feel the pain becomes a bit much (Usually for me it's right after urinating for some reason). My special position is on one of the couches in front of the TV, reclined to a certain angle. In this position, I feel virtually NO pain, and I imagine you can find your own spot for this type of sanctuary as well. I can fall asleep at any time of the day in this position on the couch, even when the pain medicine is wearing off.

Back to urinating. Since my device is partially inflated, I;m not quite sure if I'm able to bend my penis down to the point of being capable of aiming my urine directly into the toilet. Sounds really silly, I know. Basically what I've been doing since the surgery is peeing into the urinal jug... The same jug that I peed into at the hospital, at the request of the nurses. They let me take it home with me since they just dispose of it afterwards anyways. So I pee into this thing, and then I dump it into the toilet afterwards. It's actually a kinda neat tool, because I can always measure how much I actually urinated at a given time, so I know if I only went a little bit or a lot.

Another bit of bathroom talk comes with the use of percocet. These wonderful anti-pain pills of hope tend to cause constipation. In order to combat this said constipation, I have increased the fiber intake in my diet significantly, I've been taking Colace 2-3 times a day, and I've also taken some fiber supplements (5 pills in one serving). I think my mom said they're called "fibercon" or something like that. She's a dietician, so she's helping me out in that regard.

I didn't poop after the operation until Sunday, and it was a doozy. One thing you have to realize if you suspect constipation, is that the first time you go, it's gonna be a battle. Everytime you go after that will be significantly easier. For me, it was double difficult because my penis is partially inflated, so it's sticking out awkwardly while I sit down trying to get rid of the initial poop. Also, for some reason I couldn't get all of the urine out in one go, so I ended up having to hold the urinal jug in front of my partially inflated penis as I tried to finish the job I started. Sheesh! It really deserved to be taped and put on a reality tv show or something. I've thankfully pooped once a day since then with much ease!

So it's now Tuesday night, and I think after tomorrow morning's intial dose of percocet, I'm going to try and make the big switch to ibuprofen once again. The swelling has gone down a lot, and I find that either the pain is going down too, or I am just getting more tolerant of it. Either way, the sooner I make the switch, the better. My penguin walking is greatly improved to almost normal walking. This obviously correlates with the reduced swelling.

I'm sorry that this update involves so much potty talk, but really that's what my life has revolved around the past few days. Like I said, the only really unbearable pain I have anymore involves my time in the bathroom, so I figured maybe it'd be helpful to share. If it's not, and is crossing some sort of line, I understand, and will keep the updates to more device relevant info.

Hello again!

This post is probably the most important so far, as it may help you avoid some SIGNIFICANT pain after your surgery. It's all about the scheduling of the surgery, really. I'll specify in a bit.

It's now Saturday afternoon, and I am able to walk around almost perfectly normal. I have a bit of pain when I stand for too long, but thankfully, it's bearable. I experience very little pain when sitting in a chair now, which is very encouraging, because I plan on returning to my office job on Monday.
I'm also able to sleep on a flat plane once again (instead of on an inclined couch). I slept long ways across the couch last night, and plan on sleeping in my bed tonight (I felt the mattress at my parents' place is a bit too soft so I waited a bit longer to try the bed).

As I mentioned in previous posts, I attempted to switch to Ibuprofen and completely cut off the percocet on wednesday, and it worked! I was doing mighty well on pain until Thursday, when I visited my doctor for the first time since the operation. He told me that we would be deflating the device during this visit, and so I figured it would be a bit uncomfortable. Little did I know just how utterly painful the process would be.

It seems that usually the doctor waits two weeks before trying to deflate the device, and that it's a relatively low-pain procedure. However, my doctor was going on vacation for two weeks after Thursday (which he told me, I knew this as I scheduled the surgery), and trying to deflate after only one week is VERY painful. I don't think he knew this, as he was quite surprised when I was literally screaming in agony. Basically, the doctor has to feel around the scrotum for the "release valve button", which isn't usually too big of a deal. However, after one week of the surgery, the tissue is still considerably swollen and sensitive, so not only was it very painful, it was more difficult for him to find the actual button.

After a lot of fiddling, he told me he found the device, and I would feel discomfort as he pressed it and released the fluids from the penis, back to the reservoir. Well my scrotum was EXTREMELY sore and sensitive from the Doc feeling around for so long, and the pain was EXCRUTITATING. Oh my goodness. Remember how I hated the catheter? Well at least that was only 6-10 seconds long. This kept going on and on. So when he finally pressed the button, and further aggravated the tissue on my scrotum, I screamed as loud as I ever did from pain. And the worst part, I cringed so much that it prevented the fluids from properly reaching the reservoir.

When the doctor told me we would need to try again, I pleaded to just wait the two weeks. Screw it! I was going back to work on August 16th, but I'd figure someway to deal with the inflated penis. I mean, I have to urinate in a urinal there anyways, right? There would just be a lot of ricochet.

The doc asks me if I brought any of the percocet with me. I tell him no, because as he requested, I switched to Motrin (Ibuprofen) completely to work on decreasing the swelling. So he prescribes me more percocet, AND a pill of Valium. He tells me to go to the pharmacy downstairs, get the pills, take them, wait 40-45 minutes, and return to his office. Ugh. At this point I figure he's just being stubborn. However, I do what he askss, get the pills, eat some food, take the pills, and return.

As I returned to the office, I had made up my mind that I would NOT be going through with this a second time. I was walking around VERY gingerly, and the pain was throbbing and awful (due to him feeling around the scrotum for so long). Even the Percocet and Valium did not calm me down or ease the pain. As I walk int othe office, the Doc tells brings me to where we attempted deflating the first time, and he asks "Did you take the pills?" I answer yes, but that I was still in pain and wasn't sure I could try it a second time today.

The Doc then tells me "Oh we're gonna do it, right here right now." I comply. I lay down on the medical bench again, and he goes at it for the second time. Even with the percocet, this time felt even worse than before. In fact, the hour or so between attempt one and two was in itself a very anxious time, because I KNEW the pain would be bad, and KNEW that the doc would attempt again. I was right. The pain was once again excruciatting. "DOC, PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK!" I screamed. He would stop for a few seconds, and then go at it again. He kept apologizing as I howled in agony. Finally, he found the button, and pressed before even telling me.

YOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW I screamed so loud that the people in the waiting room could hear me. It was awkward leaving the office after that.
So the Doc successfully released much of the fluid this time, and THEN explained why it was so imperative to go along with this process today.

Basically, with my penis partially inflated, there was not a lot of the fluid left in the reservoir. The Doc did not want my body to heal around the reservoir without enough fluid inside of it, because it could prevent the fluid from ever being able to get back there if we waited too long. Well, this IS something that I would like to have known before scheduling the surgery, as it may have been enough to persuade me to wait until September or October before going through with the operation. If I could have minimized that terrible session of pain, sheesh.

I had to use percocet for the rest of that day (Thursday), because the swelling was so bad afterwards. The day after, I was able to ween myself off pretty quickly, and today (Saturday), I am back to using only Ibuprofen.

The moral of this story is, scheduling of your surgery is very important. Make SURE that stupid things like this doesn't happen to you. This pain, for the most part, was very avoidable. The pressing of the actual release button is still painful, but if the swelling isn't there, you won't go through the same agony I did while just trying to find the damn button. With that said, now that the pain session is over, I'm still glad I went through with the surgery when I did. Due to family events coming up in the near future, I wouldn't have been able to get this procedure done until late October, meaning I wouldn't be cleared for sex until... December! As of right now, I have 4-5 weeks to go, which means I'll be good in late September/early October.

Every day yields noticeable improvement in swelling, pain, and mobility. The doctor actually said that I was in the top 2% or so of his patients when it came to what my swelling looked like after one week. This may be due to me taking good care of it, or my young age. It's probably a bit of both. Still, it was only one week, which isn't enough time before trying to deflate the device. Ah well. You live, you learn, you try to warn others. I'll let write another post after my first few days back from work. Until then, wish me luck!