If you are a guy, you may want to hold on to your junk as you read this
I have been extremely lucky in so many ways, but I guess the one that has counted for the most has been my health and constitution. I have a better than average immune system which dodges most colds and flu’s and recovers very quickly from those that manage to slip through. I have never broken a bone, had more than a few stitches, once for a car accident that would have surely killed someone else. I have never had to stay at a hospital, or had general anesthesia, or really anything seriously wrong with me other than some small cardiac issues not worth medication. My luck was bound to run out, but I did not expect how it would run out.
For years I had been avoiding the need to do something about my phimosis. The thought of getting circumcised after a half century gave me the willies. It was so stupid how it all started, a small cut at the tip of my foreskin from the inset mesh of a bathing suit of dubious quality/provenance that scarified and slowly strangled my foreskin. After six years of avoiding it, I could see that soon I would not be able to reach in between the foreskin and glans to clean properly. The final meeting with a urologist for a second opinion was almost comically short, no question in his mind that there could be an alternative treatment with steroid creams and slow distension of the skin. Before I could argue with him (which I recognized was futile) he had me scheduled for a circumcission.
I had the operation last Friday. My wife accompanied me to day surgery at Brigham and Women’s here in Boston. Without her there to be a calming influence, and one of my anti-anxiety pills, I don’t know if I could have made it to surgery. The surgery is simple and quick, no more that thirty minutes, however, it is done with just local anesthetics. I have a particular resistance to local anesthesia and in the few local procedures that I have had done, both involving small cysts, I needed an excessive amount. In this case, the initial charmingly named penis block did not work very well and I was longing for a bullet to bite and a long draw from a whisky bottle to endure the very painful twenty (not exaggerating) injections of local anesthetic around my glans. Thankfully the nurses were fantastic, all male, I think not coincidentally. The surgeon had just come back from extracting a kidney, so he had little sympathy for me but then again, I hardly saw him. The worst part of the operation itself after the anesthesia was all in and working was the smell of the cauterizing tool.
It has now been a few days and the pain is finally beginning to recede. The biggest pain and discomfort, which I was prepared for is that of my newly exposed glans rubbing against my underwear, almost unbearable after fifty years of being ensconced in a protective sheath of skin. There is also the problem of nightly erections which all males experience three to eight times a night. These wake me up in pain from the sutures at least three times a night. Oh, and I am running out of pain meds by now and feeling a bit anxious. Yesterday I finally took off the bandage and saw the surgeons handiwork for the first time. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting as he left at least half my foreskin there. The edge of the foreskin is also a bit jagged, like he used kiddie plastic scissors to make the incision, I hope it will look better once it heals properly.
And yes, I am totally freaked out by this, which is why I am writing this daylog, as a sort of therapy. I know that it will all be fine but part of me is concerned that sex will be ruined for me, which I know is irrational, but I can’t but wonder.
Update five years hence: All is well and has been for some time. Since this was my last writeup for quite some time, folks who I cooled their writeups would just get this as the first taste of my writing. I am going to fix that starting right now, but I wanted to add a quick postscript for those who may still wander over. In the end the full healing took the better part of a year and most of the year to get used to my new anatomy though the painful phase lasted several months. Sex is different - not really worse or better - but never painful as it was starting to be before the circumcision. So, on the off-chance that you have arrived here looking for advice - do it if you have to.