Edex Still Rules- Though There're Glitches....

Well, the last time, if you read the previous post, I injected 10 mcg of Edex and it worked GREAT, but I was worried I might have to go to the hospital, it lasted so long....   So this time I injected 5 mcg, and the results were disappointing.  Little Willie got big, but not hard enough for penetration, although some contributing factors may have been alcohol (sorry to admit I was pretty intoxicated) and a some prior bad feelings between the Little Woman and me, in that we'd had an argument and still hadn't really made up. The semi-hardness lasted about 3 hours, though....   hard enough to get satisfactory oral sex, but she wasn't interested in that-- again, due to the semi-hard feelings (pun intended).  I'm thinking that the 10 mcg would be the correct dose, after all, though I don't know when I'll get to try it out since she and I are still on the outs....  Things were a little warmer the next morning, but Edex says not to use it more than once in 24 hours,  so I took my last Viagra 100mg in hopes of enticing her into some morning makeup loving, but the blue diamond had absolutely no effect-- I didn't even get the stuffy-nose side effect.  I guess it's injectables from now on or nothing.

Back to the Future: Edex Rules!

Since the PDE5 inhibitors aren't working for me anymore (see previous post), the doc prescribed a trial dosage of Edex, a brand of E Prostaglandin (Alprostadil) which you inject directly into the penis.  It's not as bad as it sounds, really!  Edex comes in little kits, with the drug prepackaged in solution in 10 microgram (or 20 mcg) cartridges.  You attach one of the included 29-gauge needles to the injector device which is like the outside of a syringe, insert the cartridge and then jab in the needle and push the device plunger down to inject the stuff.  This is a lot more convenient than it was with papaverine in the old days, where I would have to make up my own dosages/syringes, but it's also much more expensive.  The doc said to use 5 micrograms to start out, which you dose by squirting out the extra 5 mcg from the 10 mcg cartridge then inject all the rest.  If that didn't work, I was supposed to use a 10 mcg dose the next time. Well, you know I didn't want any failures the first time, so I thought I would inject 5 mcg and if nothing happened, I would inject the rest of the 10 mcg cartridge to buck up things and not waste anything.  The Little Woman and I had been drinking a little, too, so that may have clouded my judgement a little bit....

The problem was that even with my glasses I couldn't read the markings on the cartridge when I was holding it "down there", so I wound up just guessing by pushing the plunger part of the way down and then withdrew the needle.  It turned out I'd actually injected about 7 mcg worth, and even though they tell you it takes between 5 and 20 minutes to work, I got impatient when I didn't feel anything right away, so I stuck it in again and injected the rest of the cartridge.  Well!  Things started to happen then, lemme tell ya!  As soon as we started fooling around, Little Willie grew as big and hard as he's ever been, and actually started to ache a little bit (which is a common side effect, and it wasn't enough to make me stop going for the gusto).  She likes it on top so she can manipulate things to maximize her pleasure (and who am I to complain?), and very early on she became Cowgirl UP!  She even threw up her hand like she was riding a bronco, there for a bit.  She pounded me back and forth inside her so hard I was afraid I might get hurt....  She came first, but gamely rode me until I exploded.  She lay on top of me for a few minutes, then noticed I was still somewhat hard, and son of a gun, she mounted up and rode me to town again!  ....The third time, I told her she didn't have to do that, that the dose of Edex I'd taken would probably not let it go down for awhile, but she went at it again anyway (you can see why I love this woman), and danged if she didn't force out another climax from me, albeit much smaller than the first two.  I was spent, literally, and she was tired.  We both drifted off to sleep, but after an hour I woke up and was still hard.... I began to get alarmed, fearing that a trip to the hospital was going to be necessary.

In the old days my now ex-wife would never want to go around a second time, EVER, so I often found that the climax produced by a bout of self-love would trigger enough relaxation that the erection would subside faster.  This time, however, nothing doing.  When I reached the 3 hour mark things had softened only a little bit, but I was tired and set my alarm for 1.5 hours later, resolving to go to the emergency room if by then nothing had changed.  Just before the alarm went off I woke up again, and to my relief Wille was Little again.  Whew!  The next time I'm sticking to the 5 mcg dose, I swear!

PS:  I thought the, um, artificiality of things might be off-putting to my wife, but the next morning the Little Woman was affectionately calling me Iron Man, an apt analogy, really. She really didn't seem to care why it worked, was just happy it did.  Let me tell you, though, things are not totally artificial-- if there is no arousal on my part, the inside hardness will be there but the head remains small and the outside skin is a little loose.  Get me excited, though (as she almost always does with ease), and everything expands correspondingly, and then some, so it ain't all just the drugs, man.  EDEX RULES!!!

Cialis vs. Viagra vs. Levitra vs. Staxyn vs. Other Stuff

(Revised 11/24/2022) I was going to list the various treatments as I experienced them, but most folks probably just want comparison info about them.  Here is what little I know from my own experience:

Cialis

Pro:  Effects last up to 36 hours (although with me it seemed a little shorter than that).  The doc told me Cialis is only officially rated for one session of intercourse during that period, but I experienced repeated erections.  My late wife and I once made love five (5) times in 24 hours when we were first together. Cialis made spontaneity much easier-- I could take it Saturday morning and be good to go through Sunday noon.  I've also tried the daily dose Cialis, which is a small dose tablet you take every day, but it didn't work for me.  If only it had, it would almost be like never having ED, I think.  Sigh....

Con:  It completely quit working for me after about 5 years, dunno why.  Even when it was working its best, the erection Cialis produced was more "springy" than hard, and if there was a break (like when My Lady has to go and pee before we start, which is pretty often) during which the erection would subside, it often took awhile to get it started again.  And Cialis usually worked well only when I took it on an empty stomach.  Any food in there at all would delay things or keep them from happening all together.  On the other hand, alcoholic beverages did not seem to affect my performance with Cialis as it does with the other drugs.  The bottom line for me is, if it works for you, Cialis is the way to go.  When I was taking it, it was the same price as Viagra and Levitra (although Stendra has an introductory deal that is pretty good), but it worked for so much longer....

Viagra

Pro:  The MacDaddy of oral ED drugs, the big V almost never fails to produce a rock-hard erection, sometimes almost too hard-- when I tried doggy-style with my "tiny giny" second wife, it hurt her inside and she constricted my  member so much that it hurt when I ejaculated and I then bled a little from the end of my penis. Some men, too, have told me that the expansion makes them feel so inflated and sensitive that they have difficulty controlling when they climax, often leading to a great but short-lived experience. Viagra is more fast-acting than some of the others, sometimes in as little as 20 minutes, although for me peak potency usually occurred at about an hour and fifteen minutes after taking the pill.  Viagra seems unaffected by food intake, although the package insert warns that taking it immediately after a high-fat meal can delay its effects.

Con:  Side effects-- Viagra makes my nose feel so stuffy I have to breathe through my mouth, and often my upper lip tingles. There is also a lack of spontaneity because, although its effects supposedly last 4 hours, I had trouble getting started after about two and a half hours.  On the other hand, if I got to have sex as soon as it took effect, I could usually perform a second or third time during that 4 hours, and on some occasions when we made love at the end of the night I was still good to go the next morning.  I dunno if the stuff lingers in your system while you sleep or what, but it  was quite a pleasant surprise that next day, more than 7 or 8 hours later.  The final Con for me is that alcohol intoxication usually kills its effects entirely, so no drunken debauchery on Viagra for me,  waaaah!  (UPDATE:  Big V no longer works for me-- see later post on Viagra Resistance.)

Levitra
Pro:  It works fairly quickly, and the effects supposedly last 6 hours, though I can't verify that-- but on occasion Levitra has given me the same happy morning-after surprise that Viagra provides.  Alcohol does not seem to affect Levitra as much as it does Viagra.  One day last week, I took the pill in preparation for the big finale, only to get involved in an argument with My Love over something really stupid, after which we went to bed angry.  I figured the pill was wasted and went to sleep.  Some hours later I must have had a Levitra-boosted night-time erection, as I was awakened by her rolling me onto my back.  She mounted me almost before I knew what was happening and rode me furiously until I exploded, after which she rose up off me, plopped onto her side of the bed without saying anything, and promptly went back to sleep.  We never talked about the episode, and I sure as hell don't remember what the argument was about!

Con:  Just like Cialis, for Levitra to work properly I had to take it on an empty stomach.  There was some nasal stuffiness, too, although not as bad as with Viagra, but that's more of a nuisance than anything serious. But, eventually it, too, quit working for me.

Staxyn
Pro:  This a new one to me.  It has the same ED medicine as Levitra, but it is in the form of a peppermint-flavored tablet that you dissolve on your tongue.  The package insert says it can be taken with or without food, so that may be an advantage over the food problems I had with Cialis and Levitra.  The package insert also says that the delivery system gets more of the medicine into your system than the same dosage Levitra pill.

Con:  It takes a long time to take effect, like 1 to 1.5 hours, although when it finally does come in, it does so spectacularly.  The wife and I tried a sample of it, and she reached over and stroked me every so often to see if it was working yet, which had me really worked up emotionally by the time things started to happen. She finally got tired of waiting and at the first sign of firmness (about 50 minutes) we tried to initiate the lift-off before the launch sequence had been completed, so we kind of went off half-cocked, as it were....   I awoke several hours later, though, with some serious wood, and I'm talking teak or mahogany, not bamboo.  By that time, though, My Lady was fast asleep.  If anyone has a sure-fire tactful technique of waking the little woman up to the Angry Little Man without offending her, please let me know!  As it was, I just had to go out into the workshop and hammer in some nails....  My problem with this one is that I needed to take two of them to get the full effect, and since they only have the one size dose, it would get quite expensive for me to use it very often.

Stendra
I managed to get my family doctor to prescribe Stendra for me. It is marketed as faster-acting, like in 15 minutes.  Because I'm also taking Diltiazem for heart rate/blood pressure, I'm supposed to be limited to 50mg of Stendra because the Diltiazem slows the metabolizing of Stendra so that some side effects may last for 8 or 9 hours. (And this may make it slower-acting as well.)  Unfortunately, 50 mg had no effect for me, and neither did 100 mg.  At the maximum dose for other people, 200 mg, however, things worked quite nicely, although it took 30 minutes or more to take effect.  Its effects are similar to Viagra, and I did get a REALLY stuffy nose when I took it, so I'm not sure there's any advantage to Stendra, other'n the fact it's the only PDE5 inhibitor that still works for me.  The manufacturer's website, Stendra.com offers a great coupon on your first 6 prescriptions, so it is worth a try. (Update:  It quit working after a while, too.)

Rugiet

I just did a new blog entry for this one on 11/20/2022-- look for it.


Papaverine, Edex, Caverject, Phentolamine: Bi-mix, Super Bi-mix, Tri-mix
These are all drugs you inject into the cavernosa of the penis, except that supposedly there's one form of Edex (Muse) that is a penile suppository (and I don't know anything about that particular product, sorry.) Papaverine was my first ED med and worked great, but the big drug companies don't make it anymore because it is no longer used for its primary purpose as a heart medicine.  My doctor said it would be available from a compounding pharmacy, but after the terrible meningitis outbreak caused by conditions at a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy as well as reports that my local one had been cited for unsafe conditions, I opted to go with Edex.  Edex is DA BOMB-- see my later posts about it.  Caverject is the same drug (Prostaglandin E1) as Edex, but the prepackaged syringe is kind of complicated to operate-- you put the needle on, then you have to adjust the plunger in a couple different ways to adjust the dose-- it's a whole thing. Bi-Mix is a combination of Papaverine and Phentolamine and Tri-Mix is a combination of all 3 drugs and it works quite well, although again, it has to come from a compounding pharmacy. I'm currently using Super Bi-mix, which is a stronger concentration of the first two drugs.  I've tried Tri-mix, but the Prostoglandin makes my willy ache, so I stuck with the Super Bi-mix.  I'm guessing this is likely the "proprietary formula" that Total Performance Medical sells to its patients.  Total Performance Medical charges you something like $300 up front to be seen, and like I said, the drugs they prescribe are "proprietary", so you can only get them from TPM, and I never went for treatment so I dunno what the drug price is.  The only cons for Edex are the expense (currently $160 for two doses, with my insurance) and initially having to experiment with the dosage so it works well but doesn't produce the infamous 4-hour erection.  I had one of those, and didn't go to the hospital, which may be why I now have Peyronie's disease, although it didn't happen right after that occasion, and Peyronie's is actually fairly common with men my age.  Then, too, Edex produces kind of a dull ache in my penis, but nothing too uncomfortable.  Alas, I so wish for my old Papaverine:  it made my little monster fat and hard as a rock for a consistent 1.5 hours. My new urologist convinced me to try Bi-mix, a combination of papaverine and phentolamine from a compounding pharmacy in Houston. It works better than Edex, doesn't produce the dull ache that Edex does, and it's a LOT cheaper-- $70 for enough for maybe 10 doses vs. $160 for only TWO doses of Edex.  It's a much more natural-feeling erection, too.)

Penis Pumps, Cock Rings, and Other Scary Devices
I understand that they can be quite effective, especially when combined with a cock ring, which I did recently try.  I'd had a couple of less than stellar erections, and at my regular visit to the urologist I mentioned this, since I was afraid that Viagra maybe wasn't going to work for me anymore (and eventually it didn't).  He gave me samples of Levitra and Staxyn, listed above, and suggested a penis ring.  Since the arteries into the penis are in the center of the organ and the veins out are toward the outside, a properly fitting ring can allow blood in while restricting its flow outward, keeping you harder longer (although it should be used for no more than 30 minutes, they say). The Levitra breathed new life into the little fella, though, and our next lovemaking session left us happily exhausted, making the cock ring unnecessary.  Afterward she asked me what the cock ring was for, and when I told her it would make me harder and  last longer she said "No, no, no...." for whatever reason.  So I've been using the ring (hope this doesn't offend you) as a masturbatory aid so I can save the drugs for the real thing, and so far it's worked pretty well but not well enough to be a substitute for the drugs. It does kind of restrict the urethra a little bit, producing a high-velocity ejaculation similar to the  effect of a Viagra overdose (see the "Viagra overdose and other no-nos" post).  The other options I was given 'way back when were last-resort alternatives when nothing else would work:  Penile implants, either a saline bladder inserted inside the cavernosa blood vessels that is then inflated with a little pump, or flexible, bendable plastic pieces the size of the cavernosa that either you slide into them (after an opening for them is made surgically), or which are completely implanted so you have to bend them upward to make an erection or downward to keep the little fella out of the way.  I saw where one ED doctor who specializes in implants for transsexuals recommended the static bendable ones for his younger patients who are likely to be more sexually active, because they don't wear out as fast as the inflatable implants, which supposedly last up to 15 years, but it may be that they last that long because older folks don't use 'em as much..

(UPDATE, 03/13/2014:  I may have to find out which implants are better-- see later posts about Peyronie's Disease. Sigh....)

ED 1000
A painless ultrasonic shock wave treatment that supposedly cures ED permanently in up to 95% of patients, it is available in medical clinics in Canada and the rest of the World, but is still in the investigational stage in the US but it becoming widely available anyway as of 2022.. It's been quite popular in the United Kingdom, because since they have socialized medicine, it saves the government money in the long run if they can more or less cure the patient's ED instead of continually buying drugs for him. I recently saw a small-scale study from Japan that kind of scaled back that 95% success rate to about 65%, but it WAS a really small sample of test subjects.  The last I heard about price was $4000 for the full set of treatments in Canada, and you would have to stay there for a while if you don't live nearby-- You get 2 treatments a week for 3 weeks, then a 3 week break, then 2 treatments a week for 3 more weeks.  Try Medispec.com for info-- they manufacture the device.

UPDATE 05/27/2022:  Although still not formally approved by the FDA, Low-intensity Shockwave Therapy (LISWT) is now widely available from various clinics, but is still generally not covered by most health insurance providers.  My urology clinic now offers it under the brand name U-Wave: when I signed up it was $1500 but is now $2000.  If I was in the first stages of ED it would certainly be worth the money, since it is most succesful with mild to moderately severe ED.  I have severe ED such that I am using Super Bi-mix, but I tried it anyway.  It made my injection-induced erections somewhat fatter, and I seemed to have gotten some of my length back after its previous Peyronie's-induced shortness, so to me even with that limited success it was worth the expense.  Sooner the better, I say!