I was aware of three things when I awoke from my operation: That I wanted to tell my nurse about my mother’s appearance on Britain’s Got Talent, that I really wanted a cup of tea, and that my penis felt as if it were wearing a puffer jacket.
Sex put me in this unfortunate situation. While as a teenager I’d often fantasised about my sexual future, none of those fantasies involved general anaesthetic and my genitals being wrapped up in 3ft of bandage.
I could get into gritty detail about the incident that led to all this, but broadly put, I was having sex, and I tore my foreskin.
I was not stoic or dignified about it at the time, yelping and running to the shower to inspect my wound. When I saw it, and my blood circling the shower drain, I almost fainted.
I had no idea what to do about this but not knowing what to do at least drives you to seek help. So, I made an appointment with my GP for the next day.
I’ve never been shy about dropping my trousers in front of my doctor. It’s sometimes necessary and if I’m lucky I might get an anecdote out of it.
And I did this time too, when my doctor examined my penis and announced that I didn’t need it.
‘Your foreskin,’ he clarified, seeing the look of shock on my face. ‘You don’t need it.’ He then presented me with three options: live with the injury, repair it or have the foreskin removed. ‘American kids get it done all the time,’ he added.
Living with it seemed as sensible as trying to walk off a compound fracture. A repair, it was explained, was prone to re-tearing. So, it seemed like I had no real option but to have my foreskin removed.
While it felt odd to be in my forties and having a procedure most commonly experienced by children, I tried to convince myself it was a good thing. Some people got a facelift or a hair transplant at my age, and I would be getting an overhauled penis.
And I didn’t have to wait long, as my operation was scheduled only a few months after that initial fraught appointment. When I arrived for my procedure, I was quietly fearful but found comfort in the idea that my surgeon did this all the time.
It was this confidence that took me through the signing of the pre-op paperwork, into the company of the anaesthetist and ultimately, to the point where I awoke in a recovery room an hour or so later, woozy from pain meds and gibbering about my mother’s appearance on primetime TV.
I was sent home and advised to avoid sex for 6-8 weeks, which I assured the medical team would not be a problem. I was newly single but also gun shy, happy to avoid anything that would prolong this situation.
So, I followed all the advice, and the initial recovery went as expected, paracetamol keeping the discomfort at bay while the swelling went down. I felt like I was out of the woods. Then, after about a week, the bandages came off and the problems began.
To put it on a pain scale, the sensation of my underwear touching my penis felt like having a razor blade dragged across a patch of furious sunburn. Walking anywhere became agony.
After searching Google for ‘post-circumcision pain relief’, I learned that heavy use of Vaseline would solve my issue with clothing contact. My pain level dropped from excruciating to simply annoying.
After a couple of weeks, as the general pain subsided, I began to worry about other things. Primarily, that I’d not been able to have an erection since the surgery. So, I turned to the internet again, scrolling through various chat rooms and question-and-answer sites.
This time the forums weren’t so helpful, making only one thing clear – I wasn’t alone in being afraid. In trying to find answers for my problems, I instead discovered legions of men in the same position, and with the same concerns as me.
All of us floored by our operations in different ways. Few of these men were able to offer practical solutions.
Instead, they could only offer more questions about things I’d not considered. Some insisted that, post-op, their penises were now misshapen, smaller than they’d previously been, painful when aroused.
Because I was not getting erections, I couldn’t test any of this, so my time online felt like a grim game of Pokémon Go, where I collected new fears wherever I went.
I eventually stumbled across a news story about a young man who was so tormented by the fallout from his circumcision that he took his own life.
Having struggled with suicidal ideation since my teens, I saw this as an indication of how bad things could get for me. So, I backed away from the well-meaning but confused part of the internet and decided to get help from the professional part.
First, I turned to a company that offered bespoke cocktails of erectile dysfunction medication. I ultimately rejected them in favour of a more therapy-based service that taught me my issue was in fact psychological rather than physical.
Essentially, it was a defective part of the neanderthal fight or flight response, where my penis couldn’t tell the difference between a consenting adult and an imminent bear attack. While this still left me with a problem, it at least explained it.
It also helped me eliminate the other fears I’d picked up while wandering the wastelands of the internet. I was then able to find a dedicated online therapist, who explained that my problem was that I was traumatised. Once I accepted that, I began having discussions that led me down a path towards recovery.
I recognised it had been fear that initially sent me down the wrong paths. The idea that if I spoke to an expert, they might tell me something I didn’t want to hear, so I instead searched for a simple answer.
But ultimately all that did was delay a solution that only came after the mortifying experience of knocking on the right door and admitting that fear.
Therapy didn’t make me fearless, but it taught me that sometimes the best solution is to move towards my fear.
Once I did, I finally found the comfort and guidance I needed from the moment I woke up in that hospital bed.
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