It's Not That Bad – Living With Peyronie’s
I wanted to share my story here in the hope that it could help someone in the same position as me.
I had a bend in my penis that I first noticed when I started masturbating at around 13 or so. I also had a very tight foreskin that couldn't be pulled back over the head of my penis and was quite painful to try. At first, when I was young I didn't like how my penis looked but I could still masturbate without pain and was afraid to talk to anyone about it so I said nothing and let it be, trying to ignore the problem.
As I started to get older it had a massive effect (although I didn't see it at the time) on how I saw myself as a whole. I didn't think I was attractive enough and just assumed that any girl who was showing an interest in me was trying to make fun as if the thing that I knew about myself could somehow be seen by everyone like a flashing sign above my head that read defective.
Even still I managed to stave off depression, in any major form anyway through my teen years and into my 20's. I backed away from any hint of sexual activity or relationship which gradually took its toll. I still had friends and hobbies through this time but would never drink, go to parties or socialize outside my friend group. At the time I was annoyed at myself for not being normal but never tried to change anything.
Jump forward a few years I'm 22 and finally make an appointment to go see a doctor. The doctor refers me to a urologist who I visit and just tells me I need to have it surgically corrected. At this point, I had already researched online and knew it was Peyronie's disease and that the most likely treatment was surgery and that surgery would likely result in some loss of length. So after my visit to the doctors and feeling like losing some length would be just as much of an issue, I decided to go back to my so far excellent strategy of ignoring my problems.
From this point depression started creeping in, I'd already been withdrawing socially for a number of years through fear of having to deal with my issue so it was easy to keep going down that road, telling myself that I just wasn't good enough for anyone and that was fine, whatever I just wasn't going to have a girlfriend or have sex or have a normal life, I didn't want a normal life anyway.
Between 22 and 26 nothing changed in my life I was working, I had a handful of friends who were moving on with their lives meeting partners, having kids, getting married and building careers. Meanwhile, I'm sitting watching my own life drift by doing nothing to take control.
Finally, I've had enough. I want a better life, so I do some more research and find a doctor who has had a lot of success in correcting the curvature with minimal impact in length. I open up to my parents and a close friend and start to tackle the problem. After some contact with the doctor via email and telephone, I visit him in person to evaluate my condition and organize what’s next. I get a date for the surgery and off I go.
The surgery was nerve-racking, I was about to have a team of medical professionals strip the skin off my cock cut it open and sew it straight (I've seen the pictures, it's not pretty). I wake up in the hospital and the doctor tells me it all went well then shows me the things I need to do during the recovery period. During this demonstration the doctor needs some help putting a bandage on my freshly circumcised and now straight dick, so he asks a nurse to come in to assist. The nurse, just like the nurses in your imagination tend to be, was hot. Things were looking up, I had a straight dick and a beautiful woman has touched my bits. Better life here I come.
A month or so later, I've been following the doctor’s instructions to the letter. Dealing with the freshly uncovered head of my penis rubbing against the inside of my clothing and tight bandages while I was healing was difficult, but I was determined to get through it. Unfortunately, I'd noticed some curvature return. I speak to the doctor about it, he gives me some advice and says it will be ok. It isn't, the problem returns to basically the same as before. FXXX!
Then. Depression. It hits harder than ever before. I blame myself for the failure of the surgery, for everything that's wrong with my life and me. Think I was withdrawn before, that was nothing. I start taking drugs and drinking a lot, on my own in my house. Spending a lot of time by yourself high does take your mind off your problems but it comes with its own. I consider suicide, a lot, there's rarely a point in the day when ending my life is completely out of my thoughts. Knowing this my mother asked me to come back and stay with her, which I did.
About a year later during a period of a little lighter depression, I contacted the doctor and arranged to have the surgery done again, taking extra care to ensure it all went to plan this time. It didn't. Same result. Back to depression I go.
At this point, I don't think my life could be any worse, at least not how I feel about myself. I'm a complete failure in every way. What's the point in living if I'm going to spend my life alone and depressed with no way of fixing the problem. I still manage to work a little during this time, I still have no idea how I pulled that off. I was so fxxxxx mentally and still smoking shit tons of weed I can't honestly remember much of those years. My head was so messed up that during the next part of this story I wasn't completely convinced it was actually happening.
Fast forward to just last year. A girl comes to stay with us who used to live next door to us when I was young. We talk a little and become friends. This new friendship picks up my mood a little and I decide to go to the doctors for help dealing with my depression and I'm given anti-depressants. Perfect, my new happy life awaits. Hold on a second I am MORE depressed now that I'm taking this medication!! how the fxxx does that work? The doctor tells me I need to double the dose and keep going. Ok, sure the doctor knows what he's doing, it takes time for the medication to work. Doesn't it? Nope, I'm now shouting at myself almost permanently inside my head telling my self everything negative I can think of, I start cutting myself and punching myself as hard as I could giving myself multiple black eyes, eventually driving my multitool knife into my leg, it's not a major wound but I can feel it for weeks. I'm still not exactly sure why I did it other than I was just so angry at myself. Time to stop taking the SSRI's I think.
Up to this point you're probably thinking, isn't the title of this story "It's not that bad"? It sure seems like it’s pretty bad. But this is when things change. The girl staying with us, for reasons I have never dared to ask, kissed me one night when we were hanging out. It was the fastest I'd ever felt my heart beat. I couldn't believe it, this went against everything I'd told myself for the past decade. Obviously, this cheered me up, the depression started to be pushed into the background, still there but less noticeable.
For 6 months or so we 'dated'. We even travelled a little in that time and throughout all of it I was constantly facing the edge of my very tight comfort zone but I was happy. FXXXXXX HAPPY!!! This was somewhat new to me, surely it couldn't last! But the genie was out of the bottle, I'd had sex and have come to realize a bent dick, even the 45-degree bend that I have doesn't have that much of an impact on your ability to penetrate your partner. Vaginas, as it turns out, are somewhat flexible and accommodate whatever you shove in there (within reason) and more importantly women don't care if you have a perfect cock, sure I imagine it's a little bonus if she pulls your pants down and what pops out is a perfect example of manhood but that's it and the reality here is that each person has their own idea of what is perfect, often being influenced by other factors.
There may not be anything you can do about the shape or size of your man pole but it's only you who cares, other than a handful of shallow people who have their own problems. Plus I'm told a bend presses on some sensitive areas during sex that's quite pleasurable.
So here I am today single again but still happy and moving on with my life even if I am a little annoyed I wasted so much of my life but realising that A. there's nothing I can do about it now, what’s done is done and B. I dealt with my problems then as I knew how to. We each do what we do because its the only thing we know to do, it's not until we learn to use different strategies that we can make a change. So seek help if you need it from a friend, parent, therapist or anywhere and take some steps to improve YOUR life, it's the only one you have and there's no point wasting it all because a small part of you is not perfect.
The things I have learned throughout this is that I have to take responsibility in changing my own life. How I feel is entirely in my control. I can choose to feel angry with myself over something that makes up who I am or I can choose to be proud of myself for overcoming the problem and not letting it ruin my life. I've learned that people do the things they do because it's built into them, if they laugh at you it's because they have learned that behavior through their life, they haven't considered your feelings at all and that's their problem that they need to work through. And maybe most of all it's that no one is laughing at me. My problem, because it is MY problem is important to me and that makes me think it's important to everyone but it's not.
I hope that this story can help even one person come to the realization that all things considered 'it's not that bad'.
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