AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

Used the vacuum extender last night. It’s the previous-generation Total Man; threaded rods with a white base ring.

I’ve been meaning to make a new base ring for it. The extender makes my base girth larger, and the ring starts to bite after a while. After a few hours last night, it was tight enough to be hard to remove. Probably a cock ring effect going on past some point.

I’d forgotten that was why I had moved to a piece of paracord and dropping a weight off the side of the bed; no base ring to worry about then.

In another example of sexism, I must say that women are really, really good at this type of dogged pursuit. All the women in my life are champs at pushing through an impenetrable system, given a phone and enough hold time. It’s not something that most men are equipped for.

Did a mile on the treadmill today. First half mile at 2mph, a quarter mile at 2.5, and quarter at 3.0.

I used an orthopedic insert in my right shoe. It’s not very thick with my weight on it, but it seemed to help.

200# on the squat machine. With the seat all the way vertical, the way I’ve been using it, my lower back is solidly wedged against the base of the seatback and does not move.

1 mile on the recumbent bicycle at level 7, then 1 mile at level 8. I can barely tell the difference between levels. I bumped it up to level 15 and did a half mile. I decided to quit when I was tired instead of forcing it. Next time, I’ll start on 15.

I did some curls with the cable machine, using the rope grip attachment. 121# of plates felt light. Interesting, since my limit on with my curl bar at home is 48#. Like the hip adduction machine, I think the weight plates are way off. I looked to see if there was a pin or lever that might change the weight/motion ratio, that might account for the discrepancy, but I didn’t see anything. I’m pretty sure I didn’t miraculously add 70 pounds to my curl since last week.

Great job bro! Keep it up. I definitely miss the gym. I can’t wait to get restarted myself

If you can’t get to the gym, there are always bodyweight exercises, or even stretches.

Exercise is like PE; it’s not so much *what*, as it is *do*.

The rowing machine and treadmill at the gym are kicking my ass. I’m still getting noticeable improvement in mobility, though. The original plan was the gym Tu-Thu-Sat with Workout Pal, and Mo-Wed-Fri on the barbells and equipment at home. But after the rowing machine, my enthusiasm for the barbell drops to zero.

I finally finished "The Barbell Prescription", which is a weightlifting book for old codgers like myself. According to that, the main difference between someone in his 20s and someone in his 60s is recovery time. I ran the "Starting Strength" novice program over the summer, until I flatlined, then my weights went down. Considering all the other stuff I was doing between lifting days, I was certainly overtraining. I think I’m overtraining on the rowing machine and treadmill too; my mileage on both has dropped over the last few sessions.

They call exercise planning "programming", which as a software guy I find amusing, but that use of the word probably predates computers. I think I need to space things out a bit more, or just alternate light-exercise and hard work days. By Starting Strength ideas anything less than all-out effort is a waste of time, but while it might not be building bulk muscle, any movement still helps with the arthritis symptoms.

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I was grinding through the "Anabolic Minds" forum earlier tonight and found a comment about heavy exercise hosing various blood panel numbers. Mostly the same ones that keto or carnivore diets do. The appointment with the nephrologist is next month; I need to call next week and ask if they want me to go back to a regular diet and light exercise before they do their blood work.

My glans is getting better at handling vacuum.

A few weeks ago I bumped my usual pumping vacuum from 3"Hg to 4"Hg. After the usual twinges and discomfort - apparently I still have some minor internal scars or adhesions inside - things became comfortable again.

A few days ago I restarted vacuum hanging. I did three hours at 2# yesterday, then four hours with the ANS, tension unknown. Everything was fine this morning, so I did my usual 30-minute morning pump and got up to start my (upright, non-PE) day. I’m tempted to dig the ADS out and give it a run today. Somewhere there’s a crossover between "toughening up" and "pushing too hard." Alas, it’s not easy to tell where that is.

I found a blood bank that kindasorta indicated they would take whole blood instead of just plasma. Since their web page wasn’t very clear, I emailed them to verify before making the 20-mile drive.

I got a reply back wanting to know if I had a doctor’s order to donate whole blood. WTF? Why would they even fucking care? Besides being none of their fucking business. Which is what my reply was a few moments ago.

Just another Alien Encounter in AndyLand.

As a blood donator myself that’s a really weird question to be honest. You can donate both whole blood OR only plasma where i go as you wish and doctors don’t care it’s up to you.

There are a dozen places locally, but they only want plasma. Well, other than the Red Cross, but fuck those fucking shitweasel bastards.

Donating plasma is actually a commitment and biologically not possible for everybody (i can’t for example donate plasma due to my veins being too small), also requires 45 minutes for a single session everytime, i admire people that can do it.

The labs and office report came in the mail. I went to transcribe the data into my lab spreadsheet, then had to start over when I discovered the pages were randomly mixed with the labs and notes from the visit I made with them in 2020.

The notes for the 10/2023 visit were obviously block-copied from the 02/2020 visit. As is often the case, I was surprised to find problems I didn’t even know I had. Despite never having touched them, the doctor was able to discern that I have lumps on my testicles, and I have "growths/lesions" on my skin that neither I nor Mrs. Andy can see. It would have helped if the official report had mentioned useless and probably irrelevant details such as "where."

I have to go back for the cystoscopy - the one I was scheduled for got delayed - and I’ll see if I can get those corrected. I’m not having any great hope for it; they’re obviously connected to some patient database - Google and Amazon run them, among others - and chances are they just aggregate data fed to them from any random place, like when you find out your car insurance went up because you were in a wreck you never had, in a car you never owned, in a state you’d never been to. It doesn’t matter how many times you fix it, eventually the bad data gets merged back in anyway.

That visit in 2020 was before I started keeping my own medical records, after my doctor made a casual reference to something from a cardiology consult. When I questioned that, we went over the report, and best as we can tell, it was for some other patient. He said that, unfortunately, it wasn’t that unusual.

I’ve slowly been increasing the extender sessions. I’m still using low tension - two or three pounds. Four or five hours is the limit of my bladder capacity, so it has to come off for that. I’ll usually do a pump session instead of putting the extender back on.

As time and tension have gone up, I’ve seen some edema. Not up in the cap where the vacuum is; down below on the shaft, around the circumcision car. The usual place for the "doughtnut" when pumping. I have no idea why, particularly considering the area is under compression from the sleeve.

Yesterday was a long session at higher than usual tension, and I got a couple of blisters. Tiny ones, maybe 3mm, that look more like vacuum port blisters than ordinary blisters, though they were nowhere near the vacuum port. I used thumb pressure and massage for a while, which didn’t seem to affect them. Six hours later it looks pretty much the same. Oh, well. When it goes away I’ll resume.

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I’m still hitting the gym three days a week, using the recumbent bicycle, treadmill, and rowing machine. The treadmill has uncovered a minor downside to PE. I’ve gone from "severe turtler" to having a three or four inch flaccid most of the time; enough to flap around when walking about. No problem under normal circumstances, but after a mile on the treadmill I have some minor chafing. At a mile and a half, not-so-minor chafing. I get it with either boxers or briefs. For today’s session I had planned to wear the vacuum cap and sleeve, which Mrs. Andy refers to as my "dick armor." Hard to chafe through that. The blister is so small I’m tempted to use it anyway.

Great job on the gym bro.
Regarding the edema, I noticed I had edema build up between my shaft while wearing the three ring cock ring. The ring goes from my glans, the base and under my balls and just like yours I think the fluid just wasn’t flowing between the glans and the shaft area near the circumcision scar. Mine went down after a few hours but I did feel a pinch so I’m guessing that there some uneven pressure on your extender that may have sat tightly just above that spot that caused the edema, maybe your sleeve when unrolled compressed your skin. I sometimes unroll and I wasn’t tightly pulled back. I can only guess…as long as it goes down, or perhaps ice it.

Could be. I went ahead and put the cap and sleeve on before heading to the gym yesterday. When I took it off four hours later, the smaller blister was gone and the larger was barely noticeable. I went to bed later without an evening PE session. When I got up to pee about 0300, the blister was completely gone. It would have been smarter to give it some more time, but I rigged the ANS bits up and clocked another three hours. I just took it off, and while my glans feels a bit beaten up, there are no blisters. Or edema.

Thinking back, the edema thing seems to become noticeable around the four hour point. I’ll keep an eye out in the future. It’s not a problem - just some edema, not a donut - but I’m puzzled as to the mechanics of it.