[ ARC forum 2 ]

More pros and cons.

Written by Paul B. at 20 Oct 2002 00:58:40:

As an answer to: Re: Sorry about the rush last night written by ned at 19 Oct 2002 19:51:35:

> Thanks I feel a lot better now with simple straight forward advice, the urologist spent all of 5 mins and 4 of that was reading note's.

Well there you go. A urologist has a job to do. His job is cutting things up and stitching things together, as efficiently as possible. You were referred to him for a circumcision, so he says "Yeah, let's do a circumcision". If you were referred for medical management of your balano-posthitis, you wouldn't have been referred to a urologist, would you?

I perhaps should remark on the predictable (and indeed, predicted intrusion by "AJ" with his Vincent Price-like signature remark: "All the best.") He says: "Ned, here's a link that you may find useful. It contains comments and advice from an actual doctor."

And this is the deceptive lure of the Internet. There are "Net Doctor"-s out there, who answer questions on high-profile commercial sites. They might even be in clinical practice, though I suspect not. In this case, she quotes - more-or-less at random - from a surgical review article (by surgeons - not GPs who see these matters before referral though yours appears to be fazed by it, or dermatologists) as if it in some way represented current opinion on LSA. Problem is - it does not, but it was a neat way for her to answer a topic query with some information, as if she had some expertise in that area. See the trick?

> I have tried the yogurt but not the way explained,

Essentially, if you eat the yoghurt, it gets largely (if not completely, in an adult) digested. It may well be beneficial in some ways, but by the time it gets to the other end, where it really matters to both women and men, very little survives. Odd though it may appear at first, there is considerable logic in direct application of live yoghurt culture to the foreskin and/ or the vagina where there is a problem. It's certainly worth a try.

And if you are getting a discharge, I'd definitely not go probing around with cotton swabs, but just wash/ flush with water. Yoghurt is going to do far less damage than soap!

> diflucan has helped in the past,

Just how much good? Do you mean the problem resolved when you used it, but came back afterward? If indeed you have a problem with diabetic control, you can only expect this - you will need to continue "thrush" management all the time till you have consistently normal sugars.

> will the constriction recede if the thrush is controlled?

When the thrush is controlled and only then, (or earlier if you can continue to use Diflucan) you will want to use some steroid to reverse the scarring process (also in these archives) and you will be able to stretch (also in these archives) the foreskin back to normal.


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