Weird Cord-Like Thing

Okay, I don’t know what to think about this for sure.

A few days ago after pumping, I noticed after my session that a hard “cord” had appeared. It was on the top of my penis, a little left of center; and ran lengthwise from almost the bottom of the glans straight down to the base of the penis, just underneath the skin. It felt much like a guitar string stretched tight. Upon feeling it, it reminded me of sinew, or rawhide. Not as hard as a steel cable or anything, but certainly a lot like gristle or sinew, flexible but strong! It was easily visible, but under the skin as I said. No pain… in fact I didn’t even feel it and didn’t notice it until I looked down. I could feel it and slide the skin over the top of it. It was smooth, like fishing line, except one little area along it’s length (about 1/2 inch long or less) there were some teeny tiny little bumps. Imagine a hand operated wood-saw blade, or a hacksaw blade, and running your thumb along the blade. Little bumps, that’s what it felt like underneath the skin.

Within about two hours it vanished, just as mysteriously as it had appeared. I laid off for a five days just to be safe. Everything seems totally normal. No pain, no numbness, nothing.

My hunch is that it was a tendon or a ligament, but I want to be more certain about this. It was perfectly straight, like a string stretched tight, no bends, turns, or “squiggles” like a blood vessel would have. Frankly I cannot imagine any blood vessel being able to withstand the amount of “stretch” or tautness that this had without breaking, but it’s better to ask, than it is to assume. One person has suggested it’s a lig, another has suggested it’s a temporary thrombosis. I’m not sure what to think so I’m asking.

This has happened before, a long time ago. I was doing some sex-play (some ropes were involved) and what it amounts to was pulling straight down on the erect penis from the base though, not the tip. This was when I had my first lig-pop and it also had three or four little bumps. It occurred right at the base where the penis attaches to the body. It, too, vanished in a few hours, there was never any problem: pain, numbness or other side effects.

The funny thing about this recent one is it was so long, going almost the whole length of the penis, and down into the base or pubic bone area. Are the ligaments really that long? This thing ran from the pubic bone all the way up the penis for a good three-quarters of it’s length! At the upper end of it, it kind of “faded out” or “tapered off” smoothly, disappearing just before it reached the bottom of the glans.

There is nothing significantly different in my routine, except a few days before I bumped the vacuum pressure up from 3½” hg to 4” hg. This is still really low pressure, calculated to slowly increase as per many good recommendations suggest out there. I have followed Avocet’s guidelines in “Pumping 101” religiously, I haven’t done any freaky shit like yielding to the temptation to “crank the pressure up” or do “marathon pumping sessions” or any of that.

I had slacked-off of my program for about six weeks due to some “life shit” I was going through at the time, but had already been pumping again for about two weeks when this occurred, and as mentioned had recently “bumped” the pressure up just a little bit, one half of an inch of vacuum pressure. Perhaps it had deconditioned?

Does anyone have any insights? :confused:

It sounds like the Septum.

Septum

Dorsal Nerve

Those are really good pictures for this.

The first one gives a really good idea. This cord was not right in the center, though, like the blue line is. It was a little off to the left.

The second picture shows the deep dorsal vein exactly on top above the septum, and shaded in gray. Working across, it shows the dorsal artery shaded in black. Next to this is the dorsal nerve shaded in white, and if you look there’s another thing next to it shaded in white also, but smaller and actually it seems to be tapering too, as I described. This is pretty close to the position it was in, the “little off to the left” that I was describing, where those two white shaded things are. I couldn’t tell which one of the two it is for sure, they are pretty close together.

It isn’t labeled though, that other white “thing” pictured. Is this a lig? I should also clarify that the thing I had was going straight along the length of the shaft, like the other things are, it didn’t take off in a different direction as pictured just in case you are wondering. Perhaps they made it “veer off” in another direction for illustration purposes. Anyway this is great! These pictures “nail down” what I’m talking about really well!

Okay, here’s where you find out that I am NOT an artist! :) I tried to draw what it looked like in this pic. The red line I drew in is how the skin was, lifted up above the penis tissue. The blue stuff is my rendition of the “cord” or whatever it was, tapering down toward the front. Not too good, but maybe you get the idea. I have an upward curve, so it was literally lifting the skin up in a straight line lengthwise. Could this be a ligament?

I think from your description and my own experience, what you’re referring to is what is labeled as one of 2 dorsal arteries.
The big question is what is it’s healthy condition. I’ve noticed (like electron?) that when I’m pumped up from a PE session, especially jelqing, it has a tendency to be really engorged. To the point that it’s about half as big as the main deep dorsal vein.The strange thing is that the artery on the right side does not become engorged / swollen like the one on the left side. I always thought it was a vein / artery and since much has been posted concerning the increased vein look to a well PE’d unit, I figured it was normal. It does go away fairly quick and causes no discomfort. Now that it’s a topic of discussion, I’m wondering if I should be concerned? electron are you in any way doing any clamping, wearing a C ring, or using any kind of a strap around your base by chance? Pumping at high Vac? OK, I’ll head on over to the injuries forum but I’m not sure I’ll find a lot since I’m not really sure it’s an injury? Anyone else familiar with this?
Tiny little red bumps are one thing, for lack of a better term - friction marks and do go away quickly. The other bumps or what may seem like under the skin callousing I believe is lymph fluid build up? I also get a very small area of this to the lower left and directly behind the glans on occasion, usually after a better than normal work out. Again it will go away fast. Usually just with a warm washcloth and with in minutes. Am I damaging myself here? A lot has indeed been posted about this, but still I wouldn’t mind it if some of the veterans chimed in on this one.

Thanks
T.

Thanks for the response, Tork.

Nope. No clamps, cockrings/rubber bands/ropes/chains/amazonian boa constrictors, or devices of any kind at the base or anywhere else. Just pumping like usual, with a plain old garden-variety everyday straight wall cylinder. No flaring on the end or anything special there either. I am not packing the tube yet either (girthwise), not anywhere close really. I think it is beginning to, just barely, right at the base but it’s hard to tell sometimes… trying to see through the magnification the tube causes and the lube and everything going on. So I don’t see any way it can cause friction there, it isn’t even touching the wall of the cylinder yet.

It also has nothing to with red bumps on the skin, red spots, or purple spots. There was nothing different about the skin; it stayed totally normal the whole time except the fact that it was being lifted up because there was this cord thing underneath it. The bumps were actually along the cord-thing, underneath the skin, 1/4 to 1/2 inch along it’s length. They were [i]part of]/i] the cord thing. The bumps were located about one-third of the way up the penis from the base/fat pad.

I had recently moved up from 3.5” hg to 4.0” hg, but this is still a fairly low vacuum setting. If I milk the tube, it will bounce the needle on the gauge between 3 and 5 hg. Nothing terribly radical or extreme about this either, from what I know anyway.

This is a painful visual, but I’ll draw it anyway. Imagine a needle and thread. Now get rid of the thread and replace it with something like 50 pound test monofilament fishing line, or a piece of smooth wire. Like a guitar string wire or whatever. Now, imagine someone sticking it underneath the skin ( I told you!) just behind the glans a little bit, and running it or threading it underneath the skin down the whole length of the penis, down into the pubic bone/ligs area. Now they stretch it tight, and tie off both ends. Were talking guitar string here! If the skin wasn’t there covering it up, you could go “twang twang twang” on it! You could probably tow a small car with this thing!

I also put my finger on it in different spots and held it there for a second, to observe if the cord was pulsating or throbbing in any way, like a blood vessel would do. No dice.

I have read somewhere (back in the old lig-pop posts, I think) that ligs will get these little bumps along the ligament when it is stretched sometimes. That’s another reason I think it has to be a lig, but I want to get feedback to be sure. Is it just a tight lig that is stretching itself out?

Should I back off? Should I keep stretching it out? Is it thrombosis?

It’s interesting that you mention the left side happening to you also. (I have always masturbated with my right hand, maybe that has something to do with it?) Is this your experience too? Maybe we have discovered a whole new medical condition: “leftically challenged disorder” or something.

Sounds like a thrombosed vein. Do a search, there is plenty written about it. Basically you have a blood clot in your vein. I suffered this when I started pumping, and got too zealous. Shortly afterward my penis became infected, started to swell and turn red and got real sore. I went to a urologist who put me on antibiotics for a couple weeks. The whole episode cost me several hundred dollars and alot of worry.

Just lay off the pump for awhile, do regular heat wraps and take it easy.

Thanks for the input. I still think I find it hard to believe it’s a blood vessel. How can a vessel roughly 1/16 of an inch be that stretched without breaking. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Somebody would have to explain it better than this before I believe it. How could it suddenly get a five inch glob of blockage 4 or 5 inches long, perfectly steraight and as hard as a wire almost, in a twenty minute pumping session? A fatigued ligament makes sense, but a blood vessel I just have a hard time picturing that in my mind. Everything went totally back to normal in an hour or two. It isn’t infected, numb, swollen, discolored or anything funky like that either, and it’s been a week now. It’s been a happy, healthy penis ever since. Like it just got inflamed for an hour, then disappeared.

I had exactly the same description of cord like whatever. Had pearl type bumps along it’s length. Went to my doctor for something else, but showed it to him while I was there, and he said it was just a vein and not to worry about it. Worry about it is what I had been doing for several weeks. Read every post available in these forums. Thought it would never go away, a permanent injury. Decided to ‘go on with my life’, and noticed a week later that it had completely disappeared. All that anxiety for nothing. Yours will go away, too.

Ligaments might swell with blood but I assume this is actually a blood vessel. Possibly add some heat first next time, to enhance circulation before you begin?

There are no tendons or ligaments that run the length of the penile shaft. There are lymph vessels as well as veins and arteries, but I can’t image why why one would get hard.

Thanks.

I guess it must be a lymph or blood vessel then. Weird…

I don’t suppose it could be some part of the tunica expanding, either. Not like that. It reminded me almost of a thin strip of sinew or rawhide soaked in water, flexible but still very tough!

I’m still betting it’s a vein, electron, (not an artery because it’s not blue.) They can fill such that the become very stiff and turgid. You can’t even compress them. I’ve got several , but they are very snakey and not straight, but then, neither am I.

Doctor says ignore them since they are not inflamed and do not hurt. They are only very full veins.

Yeah, the docs have told me the same thing. It’s hard not to get freaked out about what seems to be a thrombosed vein, but the docs know what they’re talking about.

:)

:)

OK, apparently it’s a vein. I saw it again the other night and it’s a squiggly vein that is coming up to the surface making itself visible. It wasn’t as stressed out or “stretched as tight” as it was before, but it was still fairly pumped up, like a tire with 20 or 30 PSI of pressure in it. Feeling it, I could tell it’s the “same thing”, not something different next to it or anything. It was snakey too, not stretched in a straight line like before. I never knew a blood vessel would take pressure like that without just blowing up or something. That’s a new one on me.