I tought I should share my implant story to make my small contribution to this great comunity. Maybe it can be useful for someone the same way other stories was useful to me.
I think i read almost all stories on here, good or bad, and it was a major part in my information gathering process that led to my decision to have an implant done and also gave me a hint about what I could expect after.
I live in Europe so I am not a fellow country man to most of you guys and I cant obviusly dont give any tips about surgeons or insurence processes and please excuse any grammar or spelling errors as english is not my first language.
And the text is pretty long, couldn't condense it more. This is my story of 8 weeks that changed my life.
My story
Im still a pretty young guy at 37 years old, fit and in good health, and my ED is a result of "natural" veneous leak that got worse with time. In my early teens and 20s my erections functioned semi "normally" but in my early 30s it was downhill.
At 30 i was not able to have a functioning erection without pills. At 32 the pills stopped working satisfactory and i could only maintain a very short erection.
I was single and got really depressed. Was this it? What a sick fate life had given me i tought. "Young", pretty sucessfull in most aspects, horny as hell but not being able to have a full life. I prepared to live the rest of my life alone.
For years i did nothing.... i just tuned the problem out of life and focussed on work. I turned down all chanses to meanigful relationships because it was not worth it. I was so shallow that i tought I had nothing to offer in a new relationship and it just didn't feel worth it with all the problems and explaining and the risk of getting pitied etc
But so early this year I snapped out of that. I started reserching what could be done. I found information about shots, caverject, and i found this site Franktalk and read all I could.
The tought of putting a big needle into my dick really felt awful but now I was on a path of taking all chances. I called up an uro and made an apointment.
I am a pretty persuasive guy so 10 mins after first meeting the uro i had a test shot of the lowest dose of Caverject. And it didn't work.......
But i din't give up so i brought a big box of shots home with me and the following 10 days i shot 1 needle every day into my poor member until i reached the maximum dose of 40 mikrogram pure Caverject.
It still didn't work....My venous leak was so bad that i got a 30 sec erection from a caverject dose suited for elephants:)
But now i was an a path to try everything and I called the uro and asked: "whats next?", I already new the answer. He had me take a doppler test to confirm the veneous leak and then refer me to a URO surgeon.
I went for a consultation with the suregeon. It turned out to be a...woman. But she was great and she was good to talk to. The first thing she said was "you are young, you can't have it this way!".
We talked about implants and she showed me how they worked. I of course new all about them from reading all the franktalk posts and browsing every article remotly related on the Internet including the different manufacureres information, even including operation manuals and stuff like that. I think i actually knew more about it then her.
She told me that she only did two-piece implants but was in training for three piece penile implants under the most experiancde implant surgeon in my country working for one of the university reserch hospitals and that she would book me for an operation with him if I wanted and that she was assisting in all her referals. She recommended the AMS700 as that was the implant they used.
I was still VERY hesitant about the whole thing. A major surgery, a non-reversal major surgery... a big decisions. I was healty, I had a good life. Was I risking all that?
Still i said "ok book me in for surgery". I knew i always could chicken out if i wanted to after meeting my surgeon or anytime leeding up to my operation date two months away.
I left the consultation feeling dissy, what was I getting myself in to?
The week after, in july, i traveled to the hospital to meet my surgeon for a final consultation. It was a couple of hours away from where i live. He was the typical surgeon stereotype.
Head of the department,in his late 40s, was teeching his methods, been doing implants for 20 years and was the most respected implant suregeon in the country.
I of course asked all the usual questions: infection rate, number of implants he did, messurment procedure, recovery time, if someone was going to assist him and with what aspects of the operation and so on.
His message to all my questions was basiclly: "dont worry to much, it will be fine"
And he basiclly said he was taking the consultation with me to see if i was mentally fit to have an implant and was worth his time:) It sounds bad but he was pretty pleasent and cocky in a good way.
He was not a people-person but my impression was that he was the best person possible to do it if i was really going to do it. It still felt very unreal.
We shook hands on the operation date, two months away....
Two months later i travelled to the hospital. I was not comfortable with stating the reason for my operation at work and gave other reasons for my sick leave.
I checked in at the Hospital the day before the operation. I shared room with a fellow patiant that was going to have the same operation the next day, just after me. We chatted some, and for him this was a life changing operation too.
The vard was also handling cancer-operations(prostate?) so I had some talks with the older guys just out from their operations.
The night before the operation I talked to the head nurse about sneaking out and I had a night on the town instead of staying at the hospital. I had a good meal and watched a movie and tried to enjoy myself.
Back at the hospital that night I showered with antibacterial soap twice REALLY good (no shaving, that was for the OR) and went to sleep.
The next morning at 7 am I was woken, my operation was first of the day at 8am. I declined the pre-operation sedative as I was interested in the pre-op procedure. The medical team rolled me into the OR and I got to talk to the anesthesiology nurse and the rest of the nurses in the OR. They took good care of me and informed my of all steps of the procedure.
Then they put me to sleep....
Two hours later I woke up in the recovery room. I felt really good from the drugs. The nurse wanted my to state my level of pain, it was "4/10".
I got rolled up to my room again. And was given a non-morfin painkiller cocktail and was told to let the nurses know if I needed morfin.
I had the resorvoir placed high in my stomach with a separate incision as the surgeon felt that was the absolute best decision for long term use based on his 20 years experience. So I had two incisions, scrotum and stomach.
I had absolutely NO pain at all from the penis or the scrotum but got severe pain from the incision in my stomach as it was right at the stomach muscles which, as you can imagine, made it hurt like hell to move or sit up. I had to have big morfin doses the first day just to be able to sit up. It felt like someone stabbed me in the stomach every time i moved.
I ended up staying two nights at the hospital after the operation just to be able to travel home. So all in all i was at the hospital 4 days/three nights. After i got "released" i asked to stay one more night to be able to travel.
ALL pain was in the stomach, nothing at all from the penis or scrotum.
My surgeon left me inflated to about 40% when i left the hospital. I was a bit concerned about that because i read from the operation manuals that the AMS was supposed to be 100% deflated for the healing process because it otherwise was a risk for the scar tissue to compress the fluid container and make it hard to fully deflate. But I got assured that because the reservoir was placed in the stomach it had more room and smaller risk of it getting compressed.
HEALING PROCESS:
My Uro didn't want to activate it in person but just told me to activate it by myself in 8 weeks and call if there was any problems....
I was prescribed a 3 week sick leave. But I started working 6 days after my operation.... In retrospect that was way to early... I almost fainted from pain during a presentation.
For the first three weeks i took the prescribed painkillers every day to be able to function somewhat normally.
* First week I had trouble walking and sitting.
* Week two I got an intense pain in the tips of the implant for like 3 days and had nightmares about erosion. I also very carfully jacked off to see if I could ejaculated normally. It worked:)
* Week 2-3 i had trouble sitting for any longer periods of time.
* Week 3-4 i had som seepage from the incision and had nightmares of infection and still had some swelling. So I demanded a meet with the URO that told me I was looking good.
* Week 5 I deflated the implant for the first time since the operation. Ahhhhhhhhh.....
* Week 6 i tried to inflate the implant for the first time, it was a bit hard. My pump was placed in front of my left ball and easy to reach but the scrotum was still sore and the ball was so close.
* Week 7 inflated and deflated every day to get a hang of it with week 8 as my motivation, to get to use it for the first time....
* Week 8!: Time to activate!
A year earlier i had met this young woman I was very interested in but wasn't able to have sex with before the operation and had pushed away as usual. She had been my healing motivation in my mind.
Exactly on the day 8 weeks after the operation I invited her to dinner at my place and one thing led to another and I got to test run my new implant:)
It worked really well. I had my first vagnial sex in 5 years! I, of course, had tried to make any possible preparation to make my new toy a success. I got the girl really wet befor penetration and had plenty of lube available. I went for the safe option and went missionary but it went so well I did doggy also
It was a sucess and i got some self-esteem back.
I didn't tell the girl any specific detalis about my implant beforehand, just told her i had "an operation" and pumped it up during foreplay which she didn't really notice.
I have now used it 1-2 times/day with her for the last months to get it really broken in. I wonder what AMS says about the life expectancy of the implants when used in relations with 29 year old sex crazy women. I bet it will shorten the life span, but for now it is worth it
So in eight weeks I managed to get an operation, heal and get a new permanent girlfriend after 5 years without good sex. Life surely changes fast, and I can only consider myself lucky to have had this outcome. I prepared in every way that I could but was still aware of that the outcome could be catastrophic or less satisfactory. It was one of the hardest decisions of my life.
Some other facts, good and bad, that can be interesting for some of you:
- I got the AMS700 LGX implant 21+1 cm
- My lenght at 14 weeks post-op is 6,4 which is a bit shorter the my non-functioning pre-op erect penis
- My girth is a bit smaller
- My flat penis is a LOT bigger then before
- The pump it a bit funny, sometimes it take 20 pumps to get full, sometimes it takes 50
- I have full bloodflow to my glans which make it really big
- I have lost some sensation in my penis which make it take a longer time to ejaculate with vaginal/oral stimuli, still the same as before when i mastrubate
- If i have sex more then two hours a day i have pain in my tips/shaft
Feel free to ask any questions i'll try to answer.
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