Pre-Surgery Update

My surgery is scheduled for tomorrow at 13:35. I will be getting a full circumcision and it will be performed by the urologist who first examined me.

I went to my nurse practitioner after my last interaction with my urologist in order to get a second opinion. Within a week, I was in the office of a second urologist who was much younger than the first. The second urologist (let’s call him W) examined my penis and told me that I don’t have phimosis, at least pathologically-speaking (i.e. a pathologist wouldn’t have diagnosed me as having phimosis). You can imagine that I was pretty shocked to hear that since three other health professionals have diagnosed me as having the condition.

I explained to him that the major problem is the fact that I cannot retract my foreskin when I’m erect and that this causes discomfort during penetrative sex. W looked me straight in the eye and said “but men with phimosis can still have sex”. I was very angry when he said this, because it really trivialized a pretty big issue I’ve had to work with for my entire life. It was as if my lived experience didn’t mean anything since he’d read something contradictory to it in a textbook. Before I could express my feelings about his dismissal of my challenge, W told me that I was still a candidate for circumcision and he began making the necessary motions to schedule a surgery.

I had to stop him from doing his paperwork to explain that I was just there for a second opinion and that I wanted to discuss preputioplasty with him. While W may have been skeptical about my condition, he was very down-to-earth when it came to explaining to me why preputioplasty isn’t a service typically covered by government health insurance in Canada. Apparently it was at one point, but men who had it done kept coming back for second and third surgeries because of complications associated with partial circumcisions. W explained that three complications are possible: scar tissue could form, causing a new case of phimosis; foreskin swelling could occur because of disruptions to normal lymph drainage from erectile tissue; and erectile dysfunction could occur (at a higher probability than with circumcision). He further explained that the government had decided that the risk associated with preputioplasty was too great to offer it as a standard procedure when circumcision leads to the same (or better) functional results.

I get it. I do understand why the government would avoid giving men semi-plastic surgeries, especially after what W told me about the complications and their associated risks. I had sought a second opinion and got the truth I was searching for, so I left W’s office slightly angry, but ready to concede to the fact that I’d be undergoing a full cut.

A few weeks later and here I am on the night before my surgery, nervous and slightly melancholic. I’m only nervous about going under, because that’s actually the riskiest part of this kind of procedure. I might never wake up! I know that would be an extreme case, but those last few moments before everything goes black are so terrifying for me. I’ve seen many blogs from other guys who have detailed their healing experiences, so I’m fully ready for anything that might occur next week.

However, I was not prepared to hear that I won’t be able to exercise for 3-6 weeks (likely 6) following the procedure. I figured I’d be back to the gym in a week, but apparently I have to wait until my junk is fully healed before I can get back to my usual routine. This is distressing for me because I’ve made a lot of recent gains with my training and I’d really like to keep the momentum going. A 6-week break is not going to help me out in that respect. This is the source of my melancholy.

Anyway, I will be blogging daily in the week to come, so expect lots of detail about my healing process!

-T