Early 30s Implant Journal (Australia)

[Flip_5]

I was implanted early April. I hope this journal provides more perspective to other young men considering an implant. It’s also a way for me to unload some of my own thoughts as I recover. If you haven’t already read Merrix journal, then I highly recommend doing this. I spent a few hours doing this after my surgery and wish I found it earlier. I tend to agree with him: it’s not at all clear-cut that you will be satisfied with an implant, especially if you’re young and otherwise healthy, and so it’s important, in your case especially, to very deeply dig into the details. To understand why is the case and why the high headline satisfaction rates given in implant studies may not apply to you, please see Merrix’s post here: https://www.franktalk.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6010&p=39552&hilit=mountain+biking#p39552 (scroll to the bottom where he says “consider these two examples.”)

The Leadup To Implantation

The leadup to my implant was years of worsening ED due to a diagnosed venous leak. I’ll write about it in detail so skip this if you’d like. This all happened over a four year period, very gradually. It started quite innocently with some loss of erection strength during sex, progressed to little morning wood, to no morning wood, to almost no spontaneous erections, to complete asexuality. All of this happening gradually in small increments until I looked back and thought “wtf?” Even in the stage I’d describe as ‘asexual’, I could still get erect with vigorous stimulation and I did try having sex multiple times, but it was just not enjoyable as, on top of not even necessarily feeling sexually attracted, I’d quickly lose my erections once penetrating and have only a semi.

I tried Viagra, Cialis, and a few others with little success. Cialis daily helped with libido & erections initially but gradually had no effect. Viagra increased ability to get erect but with lots of pain (headaches, blocked noses, painful erections, etc).

It’s interesting because at the point that I was “asexual,” it was not through any conscious self-talk, embarrassment, that this state was achieved, but rather that my body gradually just stopped responding sexually to woman over a while so that I actually experienced what it was like not to feel any sexual attraction towards either gender. I was not depressed or anything like that as I still had a lot of other things going on in my life that were keeping me afloat.

I still got a fair amount of attention from women, and had women friends who wanted to sleep with me, so the pain over this period was that I still wanted that part of my life back and while it was right there in front of me, it was also out of reach. I definitely felt like I was missing out on so much. I wanted to be sexually active like I once was. I wanted to have a dick that would work. There were so many missed moments of fun and intimate connection scattered over the years of my 20s that I’ll never be able to get back.

Unfortunately, being young and healthy looking and taking advice from Australian doctors right from the beginning of this experience, meant that it took about four years before I was tested for venous leak. I was consistently told by every Australian doctor and specialist I saw that it must be psychological. They kept insisting on some “unconscious” trauma or lack of self-awareness on my part since all the blood tests showed I was healthy. And if I’m not improving with this or that psychologist then I should try another. So, I did end up spending an enormous amount on various kinds of therapy over many years. I don’t regret the therapy as it was helpful in many ways, but not for ED. In-fact my ED continued worsening as my emotional self-knowledge increased. It was at a point, much later, when I felt that I had become “asexual” in the last part of that four years, and looking back at what had happened in retrospect that I really started questioning the competence of the doctors I had seen. How is it that I begin with ED, follow all doctor’s advice, engage with all my heart (and savings) in therapies of all kinds, end up being an emotionally mature and self-aware, and yet go backwards sexually?

This is when I much more aggressively sort out various opinion than before and did not take “nothing is wrong with you medically” for an answer. I sought out very expensive doctors (more involved in their private practice which charges huge amounts rather than public practice). I looked up a local doctor who was caught up in some men’s health controversies (for being an independent thinker). Anyway, it was the right decision, because within a month finally I was diagnosed and also became networked with excellent private doctors. (For anyone in Australia, a lesson: most doctors are actually terrible and should only be used for simple things like removing a splinter. A lot of medical care is subsidised but the stuff that is heavily subsidised and not out of pocket seems to come with less competence/ability. I don’t know why).

Before deciding for certain on surgery I just wanted to try a few more alternative treatments. I was proposed many different options including venous litigation and some kind of similar process. I avoided both because they did not seem well researched, proven treatments so the complication of the procedure in my mind worked against them despite both surgeons saying the risk was minimal.

I tried shockwave therapy despite it not being indicated as helpful for someone with venous leak. While the shockwave didn’t fix my ED, it did actually reverse my sexuality so that I started having sexual thoughts again and I would wake up with morning wood again. This was confirmation to me that after years of ED and a gradually decreasing physical-sexual response to women, my mind had made some kind of adjustments to my body’s changes. If the body could change itself again so that it would respond physically to a sexual thought (even if mechanical) so would my sexual appetite increase. Even though this was $2,500 or so spent on something, it was really a ‘tester bet’ and therefore actually ‘cheap’ certain confirmation of my need to get the implant.

So, it was all decided. Implant surgery was due to be done in about 2020 but, another misfortune of being in Australia was that the government here kept shutting down all elective surgery while we had zero cases and then again while we had actual cases. So, I finally got it done in April 2022, after a two-year delay.

Implantation Journal

I went with Australia’s highest volume surgeon in Melbourne, Australia. He trained with Perito and similarly uses the infra-pubic approach. To my knowledge the definition is 20 or more surgeries a year. Mine has done over 3,000 (not all implant, but urological) and I think before the last two years (before government shutting down surgeries willy-nilly) he did about 100 a year or more implants (although honestly, I can’t remember the number – it may be around 50 too). Of that about 12 has been on young men.
I’ll share his name near the end when I reflect on the experience many months from now. If you really want to know you could probably figure it out yourself or message me privately.



Day One
Surgery was almost 2 hours long. (A few things didn’t go to plan, which I’ll cover later). I came out completely dazed and confused. I can see that I’m bleeding quite a lot. There’s a heavy sandbag being placed on my abdomen and the bleeding is continuously being cleaned up. I’m too dazed to really care about any of it. It’s quite ugly. There’s an IV drip on one side of me cabled and hooked into my left arm. Then there’s this tube hooked into my abdomen and draining blood into a bottle. It’s a big bottle and there’s a lot of blood. Wrong movement knock over the (closed) bottle of blood. Uch. The worst is yet to come.

The same night I’m constantly waking up due to the pain. I feel like peeing so badly but I can barely even lift myself up to sit (I can’t stand) without excruciating pain, and when I do lift myself slightly through very careful manoeuvring, I lean slumped over the side of my bed and lean on a table. I’m given this curved bottle to pee in while sitting but I just cannot do it, even after trying for an hour or longer. Eventually I pee a tiny amount after trying for two hours! It’s so painful. It’s like I’m peeing out burning vodka and rusted needles! It takes me about 10 minutes just to sit up whenever I try to pee because of how much the slightest movements hurt me.

If you want a description of the pain: think back to when you had a particularly nasty cold sore and imagine that your abdomen felt like it had one huge cold sore inside it so that when you moved in a certain way it felt like someone was scissoring up your insides.

Coincidentally the best nurses I had were men. I’ve never been in hospital for anything major so assumed I’d be more comfortable with an imagined motherly, concerned, gentle, woman. But the opposite was true! The men were the gentlest and most patient. An older woman nurse came in and told me that I’m slow and struggling to get up to sit because “you’re too tense, you’re not breathing into it!” and she just grabbed my neck and yanked me up. Here it is at 3 a.m. and I screamed at the top of my lungs and almost cried! I was scared of this nurse after this and experienced mini-PTSD that she would come and yank my body without warning while telling me the pain is my fault for not breathing into it. Turns out that the pain was for a few reasons, but mainly because I’m “very slim” (actually my read is: of the many men operated upon, I have less room created by fat for a reservoir - I’m not actually that slim) that the surgeon had to punch a hole in my muscle (and then cover it with mesh) to place the reservoir. Apparently, the reservoir placement is usually less traumatic.

Day Two

Still in a lot of pain, but eventually I manage to stand up in the a.m. and slowly shuffle around. I pee. I shower. Feels good.
The surgeon told me that during the operation a few things went differently. First my nut sac was quite small relative to what he normally operates on so he decided to position the pump sideways rather than “cut the bands” to cause my testicles to drop (did not get this). Also, he had to internally stitch using a permanent internal suture the upper part of my penis shaft so the glans sits better on the tip of the tubes. They glans were pushed backward when he inserted the cylinders which “rarely” occurs.

Interestingly, I found two posters from the same surgeon who had the same procedure done with their implant (SST deformity correction). See this quote ““Mark, you'll perhaps be interested to hear that I too had a "glansplexy" done during surgery. I had asked him about this beforehand (one of my silly anxious questions), and he said it was rare but sometimes necessary” from viewtopic.php?t=7758

I believe it might be called glanplexy/glansplexy or glanuloplexy. Niether of them seemed to be posting here because of any major issues (Frank Talk would have a biased sample of posters), so I take that as statistical evidence might not be so rare. I say evidence because that fact alone isn’t enough to constitute proof, but it is a little alarming. Considering the full context, the preponderance of evidence suggests my surgeon is a good one & the best in Australia.

For what it’s worth, my surgeon did say he aims to oversize and overstretch the penis using an implant 1-1.5cm bigger than the measurements taken, so I don’t think this is him under sizing me or the other posters (from above) or anything like that.

Day Three

I’m still in plenty of pain. Getting out of a supine position is excruciatingly painful still. And I still get random stabs of pain based on movement. But my range of motion is improving. I’m a little worried as my penis seems so tiny. I’m hoping it’ll get bigger once I start cycling and wishing I measured it before the surgery/

….

Not much to report between day three and ten, but gradual improvement and decrease in swelling…

Day Ten

The post-op instructions say to gently nudge the pump down. But mine is stuck. I call up the clinic’s reception and am told by the receptionist she’ll pass on the message to the surgeon. She gets back to me later that day and says the surgeon says it can’t be stuck this early. It is stuck. I think something is lost in communication here so I call back the receptionist next day and say it’s definitely stuck and explain that it’s lodged right at the base of my penis and even with the swelling down significantly, it’s just totally jammed in there surrounded by some kind of “stuff” with no ability to move. I’m told that it’s fine and not to worry about it. Not reassuring. Reassuring would’ve been: “this is X condition & occurs in some cases, not worry as it won’t have any long-term impact on your result, we’ll make some adjustment to your exercises when you come in.”

Day Sixteen

Just yesterday I was struggling to sit and today it is significantly easier. Walking is also significantly easier. Although still a lingering discomfort. I go to a two-hour class that I signed up to. I’ve taken the advice of ignoring the stuck pump till now.

Day Seventeen

So, the pump is still stuck. I waited a week and figured I could call reception and add some information that might help them diagnose what’s happening and perhaps prescribe something for me to do (or not do). I’m just worried about the impact on my results, since the instructions say I should pull the pump down so that it settles in the lower part of my sac rather than right at the base of my penis, which is where it sits now, easily felt – and I cannot do that. So, I call reception, get given the number for the nurse and explain that it’s like one part of my sac is fine, it drops down, but it feels like the one side where the bulk of the pump sits is surrounded by a thick, hard muscle and cannot be dislodged from it. She told me that it’s fine and that many anxious men call her all the time and that “You’re probably touching it a thousand times a day” out of worry, but there’s no need and unless I’m in more pain or have increased swelling I should just leave it as there’s nothing that can be done until my 5 week follow up with the surgeon. Don’t feel like I’m going to get much more out of asking question from the clinic and will have to wait until my appointment with the surgeon. A little disappointed in the communication here.

After reading through all of Merrix’s posts, I also read that early deflation (according to Eid) is key in order to prevent scar tissue around a half-empty reservoir and preventing full future deflation and therefore important to achieving a good flaccid look (see https://www.franktalk.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6010&p=151673&hilit=half+full+or+empty+reservoir#p151673).
Noting that my surgeon does the follow up appointment to deflate & cycle the implant 4 weeks after the surgery. I’ll report back once I have that appointment.

… Some thought so far …
Here's what I want to communicate to other people in a similar situation to me. They say that a penile implant isn’t noticeable and no one will notice. Well, that’s based of a few things and one of them is what the average male implantee experiences (see Merrix’s post at start of this thread). There may be an unexpected trade off your surgeon needs to make mid-operation (as mine did) which he cannot consult you with, a trade off that is caused by the need to accommodate to your own unique anatomy. It may be for example that the surgeon leaves tubing in one place that makes it easily felt during the kind of sex you’d have at a young age. For me there is some hard knobby plastic (tubing?) which can be felt at the base of the penis, the pump right below that too, and tubing on the side of scrotum. (Some of this may change with healing I suspect). If that doesn’t change then I suspect all that will be felt even in regular intercourse and potentially an unavoidable discussion with each partner. (In my case due to method and size of my scrotum perhaps this was the a trade-off between a pump that feels better when sitting or one that constantly pokes – I don’t know. This may be ok if you’re with a wife or long-term partner, but I can imagine this taking away so much from initial or casual encounters. Another example: there’s a poster here in his early 30s who got implanted by Kramer and was so disappointed with his result that he got a revision. The issue was that the tubing could be felt quite clearly (so that the partner would be feeling it during sex). Kramer is an experienced surgeon, one of the best in the US. Maybe he made a mistake. Maybe he didn’t but simply made the best trade off he could at the time. I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the extra $10-15k you may spend as a young guy on a world class surgeon has an exponential pay-off due to the number of things that can go very subtly wrong for you getting an implant (subtle things which may not matter to the average implantee).

Day Twenty
I woke up at 4 a.m. with the feeling of getting hit by a sledge hammer in my left testicle (where the pump is surrounded). I took some pain killers, showered and finally fell asleep again at 6 a.m. Was still with the extra pain throughout the day. Till now I’ve still often been waking up at these kinds of hours but not usually with this level of pain.

I will continue updating this post as healing continues.

[AverageBloke]

It seems as if you went to Dr Love in Melbourne. He is a very good surgeon from what I have read from members like Smetro. You are still early on in your recovery and it will take a while. Once you are cleared to start inflating/deflating the pump you will go through some pain but will ultimately feel better when u gain size through cycling.

The pump being stuck to your scrotum skin sounds normal and should dislodge within time. Especially when you are cleared to start taking hot baths. Did he place it behind your testicles or in front?

[Flip_5]

At the moment the pump is stuck so it's hard to tell. In-front of one, behind the other.

Yes, from the reading I've done I've gathered it'll all take a while. I'll keep sharing in the moment thoughts and feelings, fully aware they will likely change going forward.

[AussiePete]

Flip_5
I hope your journey improves. sounds as though you are having a bad trot with your recovery. I'm heading towards 6 years with my implant... My recovery was not as complicated.. my only problem was leaving hospital with undignosed pneumonia...
I looked forward to hearing about your progress..
Pete

[pentagram]

Good luck man. I am 30 Years old. Implanted 7 days ago.

[AverageBloke]

Hey Flip,

As a fellow Aussie myself I'm curious to know if you paid cash upfront or if you used heath insurance? And if you did use heath insurance which company did you select?

Thanks

[Flip_5]

Hey Flip,

As a fellow Aussie myself I'm curious to know if you paid cash upfront or if you used heath insurance? And if you did use heath insurance which company did you select?

Thanks

Replied via DM.

Good luck man. I am 30 Years old. Implanted 7 days ago.

Thank you. Looks like we experienced something similar.

[Flip_5]

Day 17 -> Day 27

Updates are less frequent as there's not as much that is changing. The pump is still stuck and surrounded. I'm guessing it's all from the process of trying to fit it and then finally deciding to put it in sideways that has caused some trauma down there. I'm hoping that it'll release itself by the time I go into 'activation' / the deflation, which is in another week (~5 weeks from surgery).

Initially I had some incontinence every time I'd go to the bathroom (since the implant) which was really annoying. But that seems to have settled a bit now.

I still wake up at 4 a.m. or some random hour although now with less pain. I still have all kinds of strange pains throughout the day.

Going to the bathroom to really sucks with a semi erect penis.

I am started to get very worn out having this thing erect every where I go. 5 weeks is a long time to walk around with a boner!

Main concern at the moment is simply the pump being stuck and my deflation being so many weeks out from surgery.

Not feeling that great right now.

[aussiePeyronies]

Man, thanks for posting this.

I am very interested in your journey - I am also in Aus and considering an implant after 4 years of ED and peyronies (I am only 33 atm).

Looking forward to seeing your end result. Please keep us updated on how it goes, length girth etc.

Wishing you the best!

[Flip_5]

Day 28
Woke up ~4 a.m. again shivers. My thermometer showed 41 degrees Celsius but turns out it wasn't working properly. I don't know now if I actually had a fever last night. I bought another thermometer in the morning and checked again and there was no fever. Checked for COVID too. That left testicle is really tender, still quite painful, and the pump still surrounded. There's no obvious swelling as it's been something like this the whole time since the surgery. My recovery really sucks. My follow up appointment is in a few days.