Topic
The long journey to my implant
I am a 47 year old male who at age 29 learned a very hard lesson on why it’s not a good idea to share medicines intended for someone other than the person they were prescribed for. Back before there was Viagra, Cialis or any of the other oral ED medications there was Papaverine. Papaverine is an injectable drug with numerous uses one of which being ED. A close friend of mine that suffered with ED had been prescribed Papaverine. Even though at the time I did not suffer from ED, after hearing his praise about the drug I became curious and wanted to try it myself and so he indulged me. The evening that I decided to use the drug started out great. My friend was right, I was able to perform for hours. Unfortunately I was completely ignorant to the dangers involved. I had no idea what a Priapism was. (A condition that involves the blood not adequately returning to the body from the Penis) After many hours with the sustained erection it had become very painful and I realized too late that I needed to seek medical treatment to resolve the problem.
Needless to say I suffered permanent damage to my penis and after being treated for the Priapism I could no longer sustain an erection. Now I had ED.
I sought out various urologists for help and was given treatments ranging from injectables to VCD none of which I found to be very useful.
At some point I found Dr Irwin Goldstein. Dr Goldstein performed both an Injection Duplex Ultrasound & Dynamic Infusion Cavernosography (Tests) and determined that the only possible treatment for my ED would be a Penile Implant. That was back in 1994 I was 29 years old and devastated by the news that I was given. The thought of having a device implanted inside of me frightened me. I was confused as to what to do so I did nothing. I spent the next 17 years of my life with ED.
Some time in mid 2011 I began to reconsider an implant. After discovering that Dr Goldstein had relocated his practice to San Diego (I live in the Los Angeles area) I contacted him. I had complete trust in Dr Goldstein as I knew he was highly regarded in the field of sexual medicine. After an office visit and several telephone conversations I went ahead and scheduled my implant surgery.
I am now 5 days post op surgery and doing great. My surgery was done in the morning. I was groggy from the anesthesia so I spent the rest of the day sleeping on and off. The following morning my catheter was removed and I was released from the hospital to go home. I was mostly up and walking around in my apartment that day and have found the pain level involved with this procedure (at least for me) to be much lower than what I was expecting it to be. At this early stage I couldn’t say what my feelings are about finally having had the procedure done. Obviously it is too soon for me to be able to “use” the implant yet but I’m guessing compared to what I had before I will probably be quite happy with it. This may sound strange being that I waited 17 years to make the decision to go ahead and get the implant but I now find myself counting the days until I will be able to “Use” it.