AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

You’ve got quite a large snowball going for the end of the year. Sounds like you’re healing up pretty well, which is always a plus.

Hope she recovers well with no issues.

The last couple of months have been… busy. [sigh]

Hope ypu are recovering still.

At 2 y.o. I had a double hernia repair. I have postulated it contributed to my need for PE.

I think the mesh restricted the natural progression of dick size and position.

All good though.

I had an inguineal hernia repair on the right side at about the same age. They didn’t have mesh back then, as far as I know. It came unstuck (or I got one right next to it) in my 30s. I also have a mild one on the left side.

It never even crossed my mind to ask if the doctor could do all three hernias while I was in the ER. Though to be honest I was miserable and distracted. I’m going to see about getting them dealt with in 2025, though. Sure as hell, I’ll blow one or both of those out, too.

So did they just sew the muscle to repair back then (45 yrs ago)?

If so, thats an even better case for my thoughts. Maybe

Well, more like 1960…

The mesh was supposed to have come out in 1958, but when my Dad got the place-mat sized mesh in the mid-’70s, the docs acted like it was the Hot New Thing. Dad was skinny and the mesh always looked lumpy under his skin. Mrs. Andy wound up with the same place-mat sized mesh in the 1990s, after having her gall bladder removed. Which took an 11" incision, which was bungled on sewing her back up, and her guts stated squishing out along the incision. So she went back under the knife and got the mesh, which wasn’t particularly successful, since she now has big lumps on her abdomen.

One of the reasons I waited so long was that 100% of the mesh repairs I was personally familiar with were unsatisfactory, and supposedly the "just sew it up" procedure was obsolete. I had no idea they could just do a patch, and of course none of the web sites I looked at bothered to mention that.

The doc said mine was a very simple repair, and he would have just sewn it up, except I’d told him I lifted weights, so he put a patch over it just to be sure. I’m okay with that. I still feel some odd tugs when moving around, but I knew to expect that.

First exercise day since the surgery three weeks ago.

I’m not supposed to lift anything over 30 pounds for another three weeks.

I normally use the the butterfly function on the exercise machine at its lowest setting, which is 21# per arm. I do 5 sets of 20. I was able to do this without a problem, wearing the abdominal binder, which makes it easy to tell when I’m tightening up my abdominal muscles.

I found my old 5# dumbbells and did 5 sets of 10 anterior and lateral raises, and 5 sets of 20 curls. My ears were freezing and no sense in over-doing things; I’ll do some more tomorrow.

Even though it has been a bit over three weeks since my last workout, the shoulder joints both moved smoothly. I know three months is enough for the bone spurs to grow back, so at least I have a window as to how long that takes, even if it’s pretty broad.

I don’t know how did that happen, that I just came across your thread. Gonna need some time to catch up but wish you good luck with the post surgery work out. After my shoulder repair I started 3 days after and I must say, it’s been a bit hell to learn again how to move my arm and the continue struggle to wear the orthosis. Especially sleeping in it, god, it was so painful.

The joints have layers of tissues that are supposed to slide over each other. Some layers are separated by lubricating liquid, like the "synovial fluid" in knees.

Then the surgeon cuts through all that, the layers tend to grow together. Layers get stuck and don’t slide, and fluid can migrate to layers where it’s not supposed to be. It’s painful to bend the joint, so you stop doing that, in a quick positive-feedback loop to a locked joint.

With any kind of surgery, it is best to start rehabilitation as early as possible.

I learned that the hard way, after knee surgery. Nobody mentioned exercises or rehab, and it eventually progressed to the point where I had almost no motion at the joint, and what little I had was very painful. After another expensive doctor visit, their attitude was, "If you’d done what we told you, you wouldn’t have this problem."

They didn’t tell me shit. I think I upset them with some of my comments. I was more than a little hostile.

"Dropping the ball" is the norm in American medicine. Nobody keeps track of things, so if you don’t do it yourself, you can wind up crippled or dead. It took me a while to learn that, expensively and painfully.

Did the same butterfly and dumbbell routine as the other day, no problem. Continued with supra- and infra-spinatus twists using one resistant band instead of two, some light Arnold presses, some heavier dumbbell back rows while braced against the weight bench, and some calf stretches on the block.

I felt some discomfort around the incision area after the second set, and decided to quit for the day. I suspect it was the back rows. The dumbbell was only 20# and the doc doesn’t want me lifting more than 30#, but the row puts some torque across my torso. Not enough to notice most of the time, but I think it was tugging on the mesh.

I’m pretty sure I quit before I damaged anything. One thing I’ve learned with both PE and lifting is to quit while I’m ahead.

I think I mentioned I’m taller now. I was 5’9" from junior high until a couple of years ago, when the measuring thingie at the doctor’s office said I was 5’10". Both were with normal-heeled shoes on.

Before, I couldn’t see the top of the refrigerator without going up on tiptoe, even with shoes. Now, when I make an effort to stand up straight, I can see the top of the refrigerator barefoot. Mrs. Andy has been deficient cleaning there. (inside is her job, outside is mine)

I think the main thing is spinal curvature. I have spinal kyphosis, where my head sits forward of my shoulders. That used to be a "senior citizen" thing, which I am, but it’s common all the way down to teens now, blamed on gaming and cellphone use. I’ve been doing exercises to mitigate that. Not as much as I should, because they’re tedious and painful, but some.

The other thing is "anterior pelvic tilt." That can be inherent, or caused by, basically, sitting too much. The pelvic girdle tilts forward, which causes the spinal column to curve to compensate. The curve reduces the height of the column. The bottom vertebrae are basically interlocked together and move very little in relation to each other, so the "give" has to happen higher up.

Anterior pelvic tilt requires an X-ray for a certain diagnosis, but the symptom list is clear and almost universal. One of the more important ones has to do with leg motion. If you were to, say, lay back on a weight bench and put your feet on the floor, you’d probably feel a tug on the sides of your abdomen - if you were normal. With APT, you’d have problems getting your feet flat on the floor. I can’t come within six inches of the floor, even on tiptoe, and my lower back screams in pain when I try. So I bench press with my feet on the bench or on the pegs of the quad attachment on the front of the bench.

Many of the therapy exercises recommended for treatment of APT are similar to basic weightlifting or spinal kyphosis exercises. So, basically, I’ve been mitigating the APT for a couple of years now, and it is paying off.

I’m probably a third of the way through getting things fixed, so there’s more to be had.

TL;DR: exercise improves posture, which makes you taller. Q.E.D.

Last night I was going through the big folder of medical paperwork and found the urologist’s report from 2020. He reported:

- lesion on left side of foreskin
- cracks in end of foreskin
- depigmented areas along penile skin

Uh, yeah. The "depigmented areas" were big scars from the staph infection. As for the rest… I don’t *have* a foreskin. I’m cut "high and tight".

This is like the osteo guy who reported on "stance" and "gait" when he never saw me standing up, or the second cardiologist who insisted I was diabetic because I was fat, even though the blood test was something like 93. That’s what started me collecting and reading the referral reports.

There’s no way to tell whether this shit comes from the doc, the transcriptionist, or the office staff - or all of the above - but be aware bad information propagates; more than half of all providers are hooked to EPIC to share data between offices, and there are several other systems. Like a credit report, when bad data gets into the system, it’s hard to get it out. These datasets are used to set your insurance coverage and rates. And you sure as hell don’t want some ER doc trying to treat you when you’re unconscious, using a bunch of bogus data.

Lots of good points there. Have you tried using a shammy? You can get most things off with that. Might work on records if you suffocate the appropriate person.

Come to think about it, no. What caliber would you suggest?

Exercised again yesterday. I thought the abdominal pulling was from the bench rows, but now I’m pretty sure it’s the anterior dumbbell raises. The pulling was much more noticeable yesterday, so I only did two sets instead of the usual five.

I also walked the lake trail. For some reason the ducks, which have been missing for a couple of months, were back.