Surgery Complete
Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2015 5:22 pm
I want to document my journey a bit to help provide help for others.
So, at 21 years old my penis stopped working randomly. Canadian health care was sort of frustrating as they would book me in with an endocrine Dr. which would take 6 months to get in. Then that Dr. would tell me to come back in 6 months for results. etc.... etc.... I've literally gone to hundreds of Dr's appointments trying to get someone to help me and it was very frustrating. I'm now 31 have suffered depression and anxiety due to this and missed a big chunk of my life.
Finally in June of 2014 (9 years later) my family Dr. scheduled yet again, another urology appointment. It took 10 months to actually see a Urologist (April 2015). The Urologist said after a ultrasound that I had some scar tissue that doesn't expand like normal tissue which is preventing the penis from holding the blood in the penis. In-flow was good but it was just flowing back out. He said to do 'Cialis therapy' for 6 months and come back. He said that by using Cialis it can make the scar tissue more playable which could help keep the blood trapped in the penis.
So 3 months go by, and I'm not seeing any improvement. I start looking into penis implants and to my surprise they have a very high satisfaction rate. My original perception was that you would be this weirdo, but the more I looked into it the more I realized that this is a pretty nice option, people don't have to know, it's not going to be obvious, etc...
Once I decided I wanted one I researched USA Dr's that would do it for a reasonable price that also performed 100+ a year. I did this because my experience with the Canadian health care system is that they just always say "come back in 6 months" and these add up. Plus I was seeing numbers like 2-3 year waitlists for penile implants here, and there is only 1 Dr in the province performing them. There use to be 2 doctors, but the other one just retired so I didn't want to waste another 3 years of my life. I'd rather just go pay for it in the States than get it free in Canada .
The doctor I found in my price range in the USA was Dr Martin Dineen out of Florida. He performed 100+ a year (important) at $15k USD (which would have been over $20k CDN + hotel, plane, etc...)
My experience with Dr. Dineen's staff was up and down. I must have called them 20 times over the course of a week without getting a shred of info. Horrible administration. Receptionists would pick up the phone maybe 30% of the time then forward you to another department who never once picked up the phone and never returned a single voicemail.
They don't even have an email address listed. What I had to do? I found the email address for the CFO of these clinics listed on some obscure site and directly emailed the CFO saying I want to come get a surgery and nobody will help me. I immediately got an email back from them and then a follow up from Tom Sellers.
Tom Sellers was great. He called me promptly, told me to go through him from now on, and spent a decent chunk of time helping, and accommodating my request. All interactions with him were great, and if anyone goes here, ask for him he's top notch.
Anyways, I scheduled an appointment with my Canadian Urologist in October of 2015 to let him know I've made up my mind that I'm getting this done, and that I'm going to the States to get it done quick. His response? Normally the wait-list is long in Canada; however, he's doing a special day in 2.5 weeks where he's training people and doing 10 surgeries in the same day and just got the 'better' version of the Titan with an easier to work pump (that's already available in the USA for a while).
I said yes and bing, bing, bing I had the surge performed today. 2.5 weeks after I found out about this. I called the Dr's office in Florida 4 times to let them know I would not need their services as the surgery is free and immediate in Canada now. Nobody picked up the phone any of those times. I left a message saying the circumstance and requested them to call me back to verify. They haven't called back in the last 2 weeks. I'm not sure if I'm suppose to keep calling or what but seriously, it shouldn't be my responsibility to make up for their beyond terrible staff.
One downside of either the Canadian system or my specific circumstances is there is very limited time available for bed-side care/appointments. I think maybe in the 4 times I've seen this Urologist I've on average spent 3 minutes per encounter. Pretty small amount of time considering the severity of the situation and what was being discussed. But I had read some of his papers online, know how many surgeries he performs, and that helped me feel at ease. It's defenitley not like the USA where they'll talk to you for an hour and help with all your questions.
Anyways, I showed up at 6am today went into surgery at 8am. Work back up from the general anastesia at ~10:30. Tried asking some pretty basic questions to the nurse that was there (can I talk to the surgeon to see how it went, etc...) and my memory was a little fuzzy. I think I may have asked one question twice and the nurse was kind of snarky about it. I'd hate to have Alzheimers, it must suck having people talk back to your snarky/frustrated when you genuinely just don't know.
Over the next few hours I started getting my memory back, was given a couple bags of antibiotics, rested a bit, and was generally bored. I talked to the surgeon and he told me everything went great. They put in 18cm titan w/ 2 rear tip extenders. I'm currently 50% pumped or so. He also said that where the scrotum attached to the penis he didn't like, so he moved it back a bit to add some more length. I have a follow up with him on Tuesday.
One thing that kind of sucks is generally I've been a 'grower' (that didn't have the ability to grow haha) and my whole package would be somewhat shriveled including scrotum size. Well I can't see much down there currently cause it's bandaged, but I can tell there isn't a lot of room in my scrotum for testicles and this pump. There's been quite a bit of discomfort if I don't sit right.
After I got out around 1:30 I went and looked at a new apartment, then went to the pharmacy, then walked around a few furniture stores of an hour or so. Maybe not the best idea so I'm going to try and lay in bed for the next couple days and probably work from home on Monday.
Happy to answer any questions an will be updating as time goes on. Currently I'm not even going to think about size. Looks smaller but from what I can tell this doesn't appear to be a great thing to evaluate at this time.
So, at 21 years old my penis stopped working randomly. Canadian health care was sort of frustrating as they would book me in with an endocrine Dr. which would take 6 months to get in. Then that Dr. would tell me to come back in 6 months for results. etc.... etc.... I've literally gone to hundreds of Dr's appointments trying to get someone to help me and it was very frustrating. I'm now 31 have suffered depression and anxiety due to this and missed a big chunk of my life.
Finally in June of 2014 (9 years later) my family Dr. scheduled yet again, another urology appointment. It took 10 months to actually see a Urologist (April 2015). The Urologist said after a ultrasound that I had some scar tissue that doesn't expand like normal tissue which is preventing the penis from holding the blood in the penis. In-flow was good but it was just flowing back out. He said to do 'Cialis therapy' for 6 months and come back. He said that by using Cialis it can make the scar tissue more playable which could help keep the blood trapped in the penis.
So 3 months go by, and I'm not seeing any improvement. I start looking into penis implants and to my surprise they have a very high satisfaction rate. My original perception was that you would be this weirdo, but the more I looked into it the more I realized that this is a pretty nice option, people don't have to know, it's not going to be obvious, etc...
Once I decided I wanted one I researched USA Dr's that would do it for a reasonable price that also performed 100+ a year. I did this because my experience with the Canadian health care system is that they just always say "come back in 6 months" and these add up. Plus I was seeing numbers like 2-3 year waitlists for penile implants here, and there is only 1 Dr in the province performing them. There use to be 2 doctors, but the other one just retired so I didn't want to waste another 3 years of my life. I'd rather just go pay for it in the States than get it free in Canada .
The doctor I found in my price range in the USA was Dr Martin Dineen out of Florida. He performed 100+ a year (important) at $15k USD (which would have been over $20k CDN + hotel, plane, etc...)
My experience with Dr. Dineen's staff was up and down. I must have called them 20 times over the course of a week without getting a shred of info. Horrible administration. Receptionists would pick up the phone maybe 30% of the time then forward you to another department who never once picked up the phone and never returned a single voicemail.
They don't even have an email address listed. What I had to do? I found the email address for the CFO of these clinics listed on some obscure site and directly emailed the CFO saying I want to come get a surgery and nobody will help me. I immediately got an email back from them and then a follow up from Tom Sellers.
Tom Sellers was great. He called me promptly, told me to go through him from now on, and spent a decent chunk of time helping, and accommodating my request. All interactions with him were great, and if anyone goes here, ask for him he's top notch.
Anyways, I scheduled an appointment with my Canadian Urologist in October of 2015 to let him know I've made up my mind that I'm getting this done, and that I'm going to the States to get it done quick. His response? Normally the wait-list is long in Canada; however, he's doing a special day in 2.5 weeks where he's training people and doing 10 surgeries in the same day and just got the 'better' version of the Titan with an easier to work pump (that's already available in the USA for a while).
I said yes and bing, bing, bing I had the surge performed today. 2.5 weeks after I found out about this. I called the Dr's office in Florida 4 times to let them know I would not need their services as the surgery is free and immediate in Canada now. Nobody picked up the phone any of those times. I left a message saying the circumstance and requested them to call me back to verify. They haven't called back in the last 2 weeks. I'm not sure if I'm suppose to keep calling or what but seriously, it shouldn't be my responsibility to make up for their beyond terrible staff.
One downside of either the Canadian system or my specific circumstances is there is very limited time available for bed-side care/appointments. I think maybe in the 4 times I've seen this Urologist I've on average spent 3 minutes per encounter. Pretty small amount of time considering the severity of the situation and what was being discussed. But I had read some of his papers online, know how many surgeries he performs, and that helped me feel at ease. It's defenitley not like the USA where they'll talk to you for an hour and help with all your questions.
Anyways, I showed up at 6am today went into surgery at 8am. Work back up from the general anastesia at ~10:30. Tried asking some pretty basic questions to the nurse that was there (can I talk to the surgeon to see how it went, etc...) and my memory was a little fuzzy. I think I may have asked one question twice and the nurse was kind of snarky about it. I'd hate to have Alzheimers, it must suck having people talk back to your snarky/frustrated when you genuinely just don't know.
Over the next few hours I started getting my memory back, was given a couple bags of antibiotics, rested a bit, and was generally bored. I talked to the surgeon and he told me everything went great. They put in 18cm titan w/ 2 rear tip extenders. I'm currently 50% pumped or so. He also said that where the scrotum attached to the penis he didn't like, so he moved it back a bit to add some more length. I have a follow up with him on Tuesday.
One thing that kind of sucks is generally I've been a 'grower' (that didn't have the ability to grow haha) and my whole package would be somewhat shriveled including scrotum size. Well I can't see much down there currently cause it's bandaged, but I can tell there isn't a lot of room in my scrotum for testicles and this pump. There's been quite a bit of discomfort if I don't sit right.
After I got out around 1:30 I went and looked at a new apartment, then went to the pharmacy, then walked around a few furniture stores of an hour or so. Maybe not the best idea so I'm going to try and lay in bed for the next couple days and probably work from home on Monday.
Happy to answer any questions an will be updating as time goes on. Currently I'm not even going to think about size. Looks smaller but from what I can tell this doesn't appear to be a great thing to evaluate at this time.
