[ ARC forum 2 ]

Re: Pinhole Phimosis

Written by Paul B. at 10 Jan 2002 22:16:41:

As an answer to: Pinhole Phimosis written by James Reiner at 10 Jan 2002 12:25:32:

> Does anyone know anything about pinhole phimosis?

Echo of Jim here, just to lend a bit of weight to the argument against cutting pieces off for an essentially simple and readily fixed problem. What is your definition of "pinhole"?

> I didn't realise I had anything wrong until a few months ago (I've had girlfriends everything).

By which I presume you mean you've had sex and it works OK as it does for the huge majority world-wide of people in your situation, both now and in the past. So what do you feel that is "wrong"? Not that it isn't desirable to be able to retract your foreskin, but what particular advantages are you expecting from making it work "normally"?

> I'm seeing a specialist in two week's -- is a circumcision the only option?

What concerns us is that for many, notably American "specialists", which is to say surgeon/ urologists. circumcision is the only option. It's not that they don't know any other ways of dealing with the problem, though some quite possibly don't even nowadays, but most people go to them for the "quick fix" with a minimum of "fuss", that is, the patient sees a problem, wants it fixed, but doesn't really care what the consequence is or presumes there is only one way to approach it.

So, what the surgeon offers, tends to be what the "masses" want. He very rapidly gets tired of offering alternatives which take time and personal effort (discipline is the good, old-fashioned word! ;-), to people like our keen poster here AJ for example, who are young and impatient. After a few tries, he just gives up and presumes that if they have been sent to him, they want an operation.

Anyway, point is that since you ask, we suspect that you might actually want to sort the problem out in such a way that you end up with a foreskin that works in the manner it is supposed to as described here. There are major advantages in sexual performance to having a functional foreskin, though the trick is that (since in youth, everything about having sex seems great) they tend to show up later in life and many of them are related to how women experience and enjoy intercourse, and many men aren't sufficiently perceptive to notice that.

AJ is most certainly correct in pointing out that a classical circumcision is not the only surgical option, a "dorsal slit" consists of enlarging the opening of the foreskin to the necessary degree but without actually removing any skin and with negligible damage to the nerve supply. A "partial circumcision" removes the tight part of the foreskin and supposedly produces a better cosmetic result (but mainly because it resembles a full circumcision which is with what many people are familiar) but causes as much damage to the nerve supply and does not generally retain full function of the foreskin.

What Jim and I suggest -- and you should read this whole forum page in detail to follow it and understand how different people react to the proposal, but this post of mine summarises it quickly -- is the procedure of progressive continuous stretching of the tight part from however tight it is now, all the way to a full width which would easily slide back over your erect penis head.

You will find here a (quite) small army of "knockers" against this idea, mostly telling you it will "only work for some people and if it isn't too tight to start with". Well, the "some people" are those who kick in and do it, and "too tight" means "I don't want to try". The technique of "tissue expansion" is (a surprisingly recent innovation) now used widely throughout plastic and reconstructive surgery, so it certainly is mainstream medicine. Yet because it involves personal effort as applied to your situation, and circumcision is "quicker" (particularly when discounting the healing phase), people do go for that much of the time.

Hey, I don't know whether it is for you, but have a good read up on it on this forum for sure. Go see the surgeon, but just remember that he is only offering you his standard option, the craft skill he has practiced over the years and naturally he thinks it's the "best thing since sliced bread". If you want to put the work into it yourself instead, that's your option and you are entitled to make that choice.


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