My Story

Like many men, I have had trouble getting and keeping erections my whole life. It has been a constant problem for me. Lovemaking should be as simple, easy and carefree as a kiss, and it never has been for me. This is one of the major reasons my first marriage didn’t work, and it certainly was an obstacle in my second marriage. My third marriage is wonderful, and my wife is very understanding, but I know that I am frequently not able to make love with her the way I want to.

Over the years, I have tried every new thing which has come along to help with this problem. First, there were the pills, Viagra, Cialis, and Levetra. All of them worked wonderfully at first, but none of them continued to work after a few years. Soon I found that I was taking 2 of these pills at a time in order to get an erection which would last for 15 -30 seconds - long enough for a little fun, but not nearly long enough to do everything my wife and I wanted to do.

So I went back to my urologist yet again, and he talked about the vacuum pump, which I tried. It is a real pain - literally and figuratively. It feels like it is pinching the skin where the tube meets your abdomen, which hurts, as you are pumping it up. Then there is the problem of getting this very tight band between your body and the tube without losing the vacuum which is keeping your erection up. If you use enough lubricant e.g. slather it on about ¼ inch thick, you sometimes can get the band in there without losing the vacuum and erection completely. I have managed to do this --- once. Then you have an erection to work with, for up to 30 minutes. That was fun, but it also is a little painful, which is distracting. It feels like it is pinching your skin and pulling your hair. You can cut some of the hair off, and use more lubricant, but that is messy and artificial. Using this thing, if you get it to work, your penis will be cold and wet when you bring it to bed. That is not too appetizing for whomever you might find waiting there. This is caused by the lubricant on your penis, and the fact that the band at the base of your penis has stopped blood flow to it. The blood flow normally keeps it warm. Stopping the blood allows it to get cold, which it does. To help this, you can use a hot damp wash cloth to clean and warm your penis. Finally, you can not ejaculate with this tight band around your penis, so in the unlikely event that you do reach organism with this thing on, your seminal fluid will leak out after you are done with intercourse, and remove the band. My guess is that would be of little use to couples wanting to get pregnant. All in all this is an involved process which kills any chance at spontaneity, and most of the pleasure, particularly for the man, of making love.

So I again went back to my urologist. He prescribed trans urethral suppositories which you shove up the tube (urethra) in your penis where urine and seminal fluid normally come out. The suppository is about the size of a grain of rice. It stings to put it up there, then you must “roll” your penis to help distribute the medication, which also stings. Love is not supposed to hurt. The suppository worked for a few minutes the first time I used it, but never again.

So, I went back to my urologist. He said that the next step is injections directly into the penis, which you can do at home, just before intercourse. I would be injecting the same stuff that I had put into my urethra before. He swore that it would be more effective if it were injected. I was skeptical. Trying to inject something into a flaccid penis looked to me like a good way to go around for a while with an erect finger. When I checked this procedure out on the web, I saw that it can lead to scarring inside the penis, and a permanently bent penis. Plus, I wasn’t keen on going after my penis with a needle, no matter how painless my urologist swore it would be.

I told him that the idea of injections into my penis was a nonstarter. He said that the only remaining alternative was a penile implant. I tried to investigate them at length. No one wants someone cutting on them without knowing a lot about it. I looked at all of the videos and other information I could find on the web. I read all the blogs I could find on the web, written, mostly, by the brave men who had penile implants already. I found that most of those blogs were written at least 3 years ago, so I decided to start this blog. Hopefully, we will have updates from some of these men, and others who have had these procedures more recently. The videos are very good, and I have posted what I hope is a good selection of them on this blog.

Selecting a doctor to do the procedure requires some thought. The local urologist that you have been seeing for years may not be the best person to do this important procedure. Everyone says that you should select someone who does a lot of successful penile implants. When penile implants were first begun, there was a problem with infections. Since that time much has been done to help with this problem (look at the videos on this blog), but you still should find out what infection rate your proposed doctor has. Also, you should check how many times he or she has had to do “revision” surgery - surgery to fix the implants when something has gone wrong - and why. There is a lot of information out there. Take the time to review it before you make a decision. If you find a particularly good source of information, let me know about it, and I will put a link to it on this blog.

I have a preliminary appointment with the urologist who I have tentatively selected to do my implant, on June 28, 2013, and I am currently scheduled to have the procedure done on July 15, 2013. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.