Hi everyone,
I just wanted to write a post on here to tell you about my story of having a circumcision as an adult male, as advice for anyone thinking about it or worried about it. I plucked up the courage to have mine done after reading a similar post, so I wanted to do the same, it may help someone out there!
I had suffered from phimosis (tight foreskin) for as long as I can remember. Sexual education was pretty bad at our school, and I didn't actually realise that NOT being able to retract my foreskin back over the head of my penis wasn't normal until I started to become sexually active at the age of 16. Before becoming sexually active with other people, I managed to find a way to masturbate on my own fine, so that was never a problem and hence I never found anything to be wrong. When I first took my clothes off for another girl, she didn't mention anything (I think it was also her first time, so she didn't have anything to compare it to). I am luckily still with the same partner, who is amazing! As she has never been with anyone else either, sexually, it was never really discussed or noted that there might be something anatomically wrong. After having sex a few times, I noticed that my penis really started to hurt during sex and I felt a very painful, uncomfortably tight sensation, and quite often would look down to find that there was blood in my condom. Not good! Also, when my partner gave me oral sex, this were also rather uncomfortable - obviously I had developed my own technique when I masturbated alone, but she didn't know what was uncomfortable and painful for me until I said.
Anyway, being the guy that I was back then, I never went to the doctors as I was too embarrassed at the thought of pulling my boxers down in front of the doctor. Eventually, at the age of 18, I decided to go to the doctor as I thought enough was enough. He had a look (getting naked in front of the doctor wasn't as bad as I thought it would be - and now I've done it so many times that it doesn't phase me at all!). He indeed said that my foreskin was tight, and suggested that I get some E45 cream, and stretch it daily in the bath. He wouldn't recommend anything surgical unless I'd tried absolutely everything else. Brilliant I thought, no surgery, and this will be sorted out after a few months of stretching.
So I left the doctors happy with my E45 cream, positive that this would sort itself out. Sadly, after stretching for 10-15 minutes in the bath every single day, sometimes twice a day, my foreskin was going absolutely nowhere. Every day I would try to convince myself that it was getting better, but I knew deep down in my heart that nothing was changing or improving. I just didn't want to go back to the doctors, so somehow managed to put it off and continue with this tight foreskin problem for another 4 years! I think the fact that I was with the same partner made it easier to put off - if I was going through my teens wanting to have sex regularly with lots of different people, then I would have been too worried about the foreskin problem and would probably have gone to the doctors sooner. Annoyingly, looking back, having the same brilliant understanding partner just made me put it off and off. I've got to say though, I missed out on a lot. My sex life was pretty terrible.
Anyway, 4 years on from that first doctor's appointment, one day I was having oral sex from my partner, which made my frenulum bleed as it was pulled too tight. I don't know why that day, but something just made me very angry and upset and I thought, that's it - enough it definitely enough now! I am fed up of putting my sex life on hold and not enjoying it because I'm too scared to go back to the doctors. So, the following morning, I made an on-the-day appointment with my GP. If you, like me, have a partner, please do share your problem with them. They will be nothing but supportive, and I am a huge advocate of the saying "a problem shared is a problem halved". This is so true and is one of my biggest lessons learned from life.
It was a feeling of de-ja-vu - the exact same appointment where the doctor asked me to remove my trousers and have a look at this very embarrassing problem. Once I had my boxers back on, I explained that I had tried the cream and the stretching and I had somehow put it off for 4 years and now I have just got to the point where I'm absolutely sick of not having a good sex life, and it's actually making me quite upset and stressed that I can't enjoy a normal sex life in my early twenties.
The doctor was brilliant, and referred me to a urologist, who I saw within two weeks. The urologist had a look (by this point I was getting quite used to medical professionals looking at my package - I promise, you do get used to it!). He didn't hesitate, and said that either way I would need surgery. If I didn't, this problem wouldn't go away. Obviously I didn't have to have surgery, but knowing that it wouldn't go away otherwise was a harrowing thought. Hearing that, I didn't even need to think twice. If there was no other way, it would have to be surgery. The thought of having this problem throughout my entire life was just not something I could deal with. He looked at two options with me, a frenuloplasty, which extends the frenulum, or a full circumcision, which obviously removes the entire foreskin. He chatted through all the details, and I decide to just go the whole hog and go with a full circumcision. He kept warning me that I might lose sensation in the head of my penis, but I just thought that any sensation at all has got to be better than the pain I experience now!
2 weeks later, I had a letter through the post confirming my surgery date. It was all happening so fast, and I was a little scared. Just over 6 weeks since my first appointment at the GP, and I was going to be having surgery. I was told there was a long waiting list so I wasn't mentally prepared for everything to happen this fast. It turned out there was a cancellation and I was offered a very short-notice operation date. I had to go in for a pre-op appointment several days before my operation - on a Thursday I think, and then my operation was on the Sunday. The day came, and I had the operation. (I won't go into specific details of having the operation, but if you'd like to know what happens on the day, then feel free to ask questions).
To cut a very long story short, it is now 6 months since I had the operation, and I can honestly say, without exaggerating, that it is one of if not the BEST decision of my entire life. I can now honestly say that my sex life is the best it has ever been, my penis hygiene is so much better, and I just feel fantastically confident about my body and my package! The only negative side is that I seriously regret waiting 4 years to have it done - I could have had it done earlier and enjoyed 4 extra years of a wonderful sex life. But oh well, I don't live with regrets.
I'm not saying by any means that the journey is easy. There is a lot of embarrassment, nervousness, pain, swelling, bruising, blood, sweat, tears, extremely painful nighttime erections, and a whole rollercoaster of emotions. But boy is it worth all that. Just a year ago I was a nervous, sexually unconfident young guy reading these kind of forums to get advice on the operation, and it was a post like that helped me to decide to get it done.
Of course, an operation is something that is not to be taken lightly, and YOU and only YOU can decide if you want it done. I was quite lucky in that I had minimal complications with my operation (I did have a nasty infection that required a return to the hospital to have an abscess drained from my penis - which by the way was the most painful experience I've ever had in my entire life!!). I remember now laying on the couch in the urologists room as he and another doctor physically squeezed this abscess out of my penis, and I remember thinking, why the hell did I have this done?! it's not worth it, it's not worth it!!. I probably could have done with some gas and air or pain relief, it was that painful. But that was just twenty minutes of hell. After that it got quickly better. I just kept thinking, it'll be over soon, which it was!
And now, even after all of that, it was completely worth it and was undoubtedly the best decision I've ever made. My penis is very sensitive now, and I had no idea how good the head feels and what I was missing out on! I've had some of the most intense sexual experiences I've ever had in recent weeks, orgasms that I never ever thought would feel so good. And because of all this, naturally my relationship with my partner has got even stronger, now that we are both able to share and indulge in a brilliant sex life after waiting for so long.
I would say however, and this obviously depends on individual people, but the recovery time was a lot longer than they told me it would be. Following the operation, I spent 4 whole days in bed, as it was absolute agony to walk. It was a good 2 weeks before I was walking properly. They said that I could have sex after 6 weeks, but if you saw my surgery site after 6 weeks, you would not have had sex with it! I am pretty sure that If I did, it would have put me back in hospital to have it sewn up again! It wasn't until 4-5 months after the operation that I genuinely thought that I had fully recovered. Obviously everyone is different, but I just seemed to have a rather long recovery period, and so thought I would mention it.
I must make this point very clear - this post/article is purely my personal experience, and only YOU can make the decision whether or not to have a surgical operation. I was lucky to have had a relatively successful experience, and therefore am fully positive about it. There are however, possible complications, as with any operation, that a medical professional will go through with you. Just because they didn't happen to me, doesn't mean they couldn't happen so please do consult professional advice and come to the best decision for you.
If you've got this far then thanks for reading, and I hope that this article might prove useful to someone out there, who is in the same position that I was once in. But it was a great decision for me - I am so much more confident in my body now than I ever have been. A very short example - last week I went to a spa with my partner. I used to absolutly dread the changing/shower room, where all the guys have to get changed together. Now, without even really thinking about, it didn't bother me in the slightest to get naked in front of other people. It's little bits of anxiety like that that really add up, and with all those now gone, I am a lot happier.
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