Implants + ED Drugs = POWER DRILL

In my last blog entry a year ago I wrote how penis implants are both good and bad. I think I could have continued for a little while longer with injection therapy even though its performance was beginning to decline.  My member would get larger but not quite as firm as before, and with my new girlfriend there were difficulties involving the big size but lack of hardness, so penetration was rather difficult. Thus my decision to get penis implants was sort of made for me.  I love and wanted to please her in every way possible, so I underwent the surgery in the hope that making love would be easier for us.

As I said, with implants my love wand was hard but both shorter and thinner than before. Instead of a "balloon" feeling it was more like a finger inside a glove with a little sliding of the outside, and the head did not swell like a normal erection, so I was a bit disappointed. Oddly enough, though, the hard & skinny new equipment made it much easier to achieve insertion, and we were both pleased with the result. The last time we made love I came twice, which never happens, and so did my Orgasmic Goddess, for whom it was just another really good night.

Like any man, though, I still hoped maybe there was something that would help me be all I could be, so to speak, and I eventually stumbled upon a medical study that concluded something like 70% of the men with implants tested derived greater satisfaction with the use of Sildenafil (Viagra) along with pumping up the implants. I had noticed that when I got really aroused like when I was kissing my beautiful partner, things did seem to swell a bit even before I pumped up the implants, so a little chemical boost could only help matters.

And did it ever! I had a previous prescription for Rugiet (good stuff- see past entry) which has Sildenafil, Tadalafil, and Apomorphine. I experimented with it, and within minutes my skinny willy became FAT and HARD, even harder than with the implants alone, and the head was swollen like a mushroom cap. I felt like I could poke holes in the drywall of our bedroom. The Apomorphine is a Dopamine agonist, which excited my brain and made me desperate to poke the HELL out of SOMETHING!  My very understanding Lady (who is now my wife) got into the spirit of things with almost no prompting and did her best to guide my zeppelin into the hangar.

The funny thing was that my expanded member (which by now resembled a hot dog cooked in the microwave so long that the skin was tight and seemed about to burst) made it extremely difficult to achieve penetration. I pushed and pushed, hard enough that my meat rod bent but still couldn't force entry.  I guess she is one of those "tiny giny" women whose gates of heaven are narrower than most. So our next love making session will involve only the implants.... Anyone want to buy my leftover Rugiet lozenges?

                                                                                                                                                         

My Final Solution: Penile Prosthetic Implant Surgery

 Here are the highlights, USA Today style:

1. Bottom line IMHO is if you're having success with any ED treatement, stick with it as long as it works, and only when you've tried all alternatives and nothing else is working should you seek penis implant surgery.  It is an invasive, permanent solution to ED that has some advantages but also several disadvantages.

2. Pros: You can have an erection, such as it is, whenever you want one.  You don't need to worry about how many pills/injections you have left, especially while traveling.  You don't have to worry about whether you will get an erection at the critical time, and you don't have to worry about how long you will stay hard.  

3. Cons: There is a lot of pain post-surgery, some of which can last up to a year (Don't just watch the tesimonials on YouTube like I did, look up the post-operative instructions from different medical providers, which tell you what to expect for real). The head of your penis will no longer swell when you're excited like it used to, and a certain condition, "floppy glans syndrome", while not common requires additional surgery to correct.  Although the implants get hard, the surrounding flesh is kind of loose, so the normal feeling of friction in intercourse is a little lessened. The feeling of the erection, generally, is somewhat different than what you're used to; you can also feel the pump and tubing with your hand quite readily.  The pump itself is a little difficult to operate, and for at least the first few weeks your scrotum will hurt from the compression of your fingers against the pump inside it.  The urologist said that they can make the penis somewhat larger depending on how much scar tissue is present, but since I'd had a mild case of Peyronie's Disease with some scarring there was has been some shortening, which is the chief complaint of patients who were less than completely satisfied, me included.  Last but not least, there is some risk of infection, which also happened to me.

The boring details are:

I started with a new (to me)urologist, asked him about penis implants since my Super Bi-mix injections worked but not as well as they used to. and I knew that eventually they would not work at all .  He said I was a good candidate for implants because I am taking Xarelto for A-fib, and the anti-coagulant drugs tend to cause excess bleeding in the penis when the ED injections are used.  After some more consultation we set a date that was about 6 weeks out for the surgery.

Surgery was under general anaesthesia, so I felt like crap when I awoke.  They kept me in the hospital overnight as a precaution due to my A-fib, and for that night and the next day I felt pretty good, not knowing that they had chocked my nether regions full with painkillers.  My johnson and balls were cradled in some sort of cushioned gauze pocket taped to my abdomen, and a Foley catheter had been inserted into my urethra.  By the time I was released, I had three swollen balls:  the pump and fluid reservoir felt like a third ball. The doc tried to remove the cradle, but the gorilla tape they'd used hurt so bad when he pulled on it that it brought tears to my eyes. I was later able to take it off after soaking in the shower the next day. I could barely sit down on the ride home, and though they gave me a week's worth of Tramadol I ached eontinually for a week straight.  Even though the pain began to subside on the 7th day, my balls remained swollen for quite some time afterward.  

The night before my 3-week follow-up doctor visit I developed a fever and shivered violently for almost 2 hours straight. Turns out I had a Urinary Tract Infection, for which they gave me Levaquin, a badass antibiotic with which you can have no alcohol, grapefruit, or several other things, including sunlight.  After that went away, my balls and weenie were all still very tender, so I was unable to use or practice with the device.  When I finally could do so, operating the pump by squeezing the bulb through the scrotum has made it feel bruised and a little sore.  I will say that finally, 8 weeks later,  I had sex with my girlfriend and though awkward and different-feeling, it was in the end quite satisfying.  Maybe with my continued breaking-in of the pump and toughening of my scrotum it will be even better.  We'll see.

Update: It's been seven months since the surgery and the implants are functioning quite well, although as I said there has been some shortening of the penis and it does not have the girth it once had.  I read two interesting articles among a host of dull ones about that:  One said that the use of an ED medication like Viagra or Cialis would induce some swelling of the glans and maybe improve girth somewhat until the medication wears off-- I've noticed that when I get really excited, the ridge on on the underside of my cock actually swells a bit, so the drugs  might indeed help.  I'm thining of re-ordering Rugiet, which is Viagra combined with a nother drug, Apomorphine, that really helps you get in the mood... 

Another article was a case study of a guy whose implants for some reason needed replacing.  He used a vacuum assist device (a penis pump) regularly while waiting for the replacement surgery.  Supposedly it increased the size of his corpora cavernosa enought that the urologist was able to insert a larger set of implants than before, so maybe that's something you could look forward to if things go wrong the first time. 

To sum it all up, the surgery is painful and although most of it goes away in a few days there is still some tenderness here after 7 months.  I and a lot of men find that with the implants the penis is somewhat shorter and a little thinnner than it was before the surgery. But on the other hand, sex with the implants works quite well: My girlfriend seems to genuinely enjoy it, anyway!  There is something to be said for not having that "Will it work or not?" anxiety that began with ED and continued through all the times I used medications and then with the injections, so  now I do have a certain degree of confidence that I can be hard whenever I need to be.

Rugiet: It's The Real Deal!

 So I wondered if maybe the Acoustic Wave treatment might have made the use of oral ED drugs more effective for me, since I have severe ED.  Maybe I wondered aloud and my cell phone heard me, because almost immediately Facebook showed me an ad for Rugiet, a new oral ED treatment.  It is a softgel that dissolves under your tongue, which they claim helps it take effect in as little as 15 minutes.  There are 3 different-strength formulas, the "max" of which contains (I think) 110 mg of Sildenafil (generic Viagra), 40 mg Tadalafil (generic Cialis) and 3 mg of APO, short for Apomorphine, a new one on me. 

Their literature says APO has the effect of preparing the nervous system for sexual stimulation. It is a dopamine agonist (or promoter) that affects dopamine receptors which (I think they said) send sex-related signals through the body.  It's fairly new but has been very effective in clinical trials, with the most common side effect being nausea, which goes away with continued use.  One study I looked at seems to say that it is almost as effective for men with severe ED as for mild or moderate ED....  Okay, to cut to the chase: I think I can attest to that.  There is a comment at the end of the study description that suggests that another reason the APO works is that some of the root cause of physical ED may be in certain areas of the brain.

         ( I've screwed something up in the formatting, can't seem to fix it.) I got the package in the mail and couldn't wait to try it out. I put the little soft square under my                tongue and it dissoved fairly quickly, had a vaguely minty taste which was not bad.  It took longer            than 15 minutes, but not more than 30-- conjuring up some sexual imagery in my mind, my                 mini-me self-initiated a launch sequence which hadn't happened in several years.  I went into the next room to my girlfriend and asked her to help me with something in the bedroom.  With a quizzical expression she did so, and on arrival I took her in my arms and kissed her deeply. At the end of the kiss I dropped my pajama pants and stepped back.  "HOLY CRAP!" she exclaimed, and took the angry little feller in hand and began feeling it...   In truth, it was just almost hard enough for penetration, but that was way beyond anything I'd achieved without an injection in a long time. She stared at it for some time, fascinated, squeezing it and then gently stroking it, making me moan softly.  When I did, she looked up at me with an amused expression, then pushed me back on the bed and went down on me with a vengeance.  I was surprised by the experience, but it put me in a zone where it felt so good I didn't want it to stop, so I didn't come for quite a little while, but when I finally did come it was explosive, and would have set new height and distance records for me had she not completely contained and swallowed it all except for a little dribble that ran down her chin. She stared hotly into my eyes and grinned.  

It's hard to describe the difference in feel between an oral drug-induced erection and one achieved by injection. It just feels more natural, and by extension more exciting.  I felt much like I had back in the day almost 18 years ago when Cialis enabled me to make love with my late wife 5 times in one 24- hour period.  Having had severe ED for the last 10 years or so, it was incredibly surprising.  I'm kind of hoping that with repeated use I may be able to achieve actual penetration-worthy hardness. I admit I've contemplated maybe taking two doses at once:  I don't know about the double Sildenafil and Tadalafil, but the APO study tested doses up to 6 mg, so I think I'd be good, there. Hmmm...

The bottom line is, I would bet that a man with mild or moderate ED would be blown away by how effective Rugiet can be, maybe men with severe ED, too.  But of course, it's not cheap-- the 1-time trial order was $170 for 6 doses, although the regular recurring order option i, I think, a little cheaper per dose.  Right now, though, I'd say it's freakin' WORTH IT, BABY!