AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

I’m still running the pump/clamp alternation.

15 minutes in the tube at 5" Hg, with heat
10 minutes clamping
15 minutes in the tube at 5" Hg, with heat
10 minutes clamping
15 minutes in the tube at 5" Hg, with heat

About ten days ago I bumped the clamp time to 15 minutes, and a couple of days ago I moved from 5"Hg to 6". Some discomfort ahead of the circumcision scar and in the glans, but no petechiae or blisters, and no more edema than before.

Got the new batch of testosterone in. Manufactured by "Wilshire", which I’ve gotten a few times. The pharmacy seldom provides the same manufacturer twice in a row.

This batch has, prominently printed on the box, "FOR INTRAMUSCULAR USE ONLY." That’s new. Apparently it’s not just my endo who opposes subdermal injection.

[opens a fresh bag of insulin syringes]

You going to stick with 6"?

As long as I don’t have any problems, yes. After the first few days it felt the same as 5"

I got another pound of raw shea butter. In four years I’ve been through… maybe six pounds of it, so far. Every container has had a slightly different odor and color. All the previous ones were hard enough to require cutting with a knife at room temperature; this one is in a much larger container, and is more like stiff foam, like it was aerated before it set up. On the other hand, you can dip it out with a spoon, which is handy. I mixed up a new batch of the simplified Glop - just shea butter and hyaluronic acid - and it works the same as always.

At the last pumping session yesterday morning I got a sharp pain in the right side of my shaft, right at the sulcus behind the glans. It felt much like the sting from a vacuum blister. I couldn’t see any discoloration or feel any kind of bump or string. And as I handled the area to try to localize the pain, the pain went away.

Every time I’d take a leak I’d get a sharp stab of pain when pushing the skin back, but I still couldn’t press anywhere to get the same result.

This morning the pain was much milder. I tried a 15 minute pump session; no problem.

My tentative theory is that one of the internal scars popped loose and damaged a nearby nerve. The twinges aren’t exactly like what I got a few years ago during the remediation process, but I haven’t had any pain from that in, oh, maybe two years.

Stepping up to 6"Hg and mixing clamping and pumping sessions has put a lot of extra stress on the distal end of my penis; it’s visibly larger in the tube. So there’s more cowbell to release any left-over scars.

are you still using a custom pump? how do you measure hg?

I’m mostly using a LeLuv 2-1/8" tube, a Spectra S2 breast pump with a bleeder valve to control vacuum, a 115v heating pad, and a temperature controller with a thermocouple. I have an industrial vacuum gauge spliced into the vacuum hose.

The "blister" isn’t visible now, but the twinges still occur every now and then. I’m not particularly concerned about the twinges, other than the ‘ouch’ factor. I had a lot of nerve damage from the staph infection years ago.

The evening before the blister, I was using my high-power Red Light Therapy panel while pumping my balls. The metal housing gets pretty hot. My shaft was laying against the panel, and I had to move it a few times, and eventually insulate it from the heat with a wadded paper towel. I already know from heating the tube that the glans has much less cooling blood flow than the shaft, and it’s easy to overheat the glans. (no, no fun there at all)

The twinges didn’t show up until the morning pump, and I didn’t feel or see a blister until the next day. Vacuum blisters are always immediate, and visible as soon as I remove the hanger bell. I’ve never had a vacuum blister while pumping, and while this *looks* like a vacuum blister, nothing else is similar. Also, vacuum blisters tend to recur at the same places; this is a new place. So I suspect it’s a minor burn from the housing of the RLT lamp.

It’s annoying not to know for sure, but that’s how all this works.

By the end of the day there was no more discomfort from the area, and subsequent pumping didn’t cause any changes. So my best guess is that the underlying cause was a minor burn.

Not using heat right now but prior to the Totalman pad I had a pad and it had a hot spot which I had covered with a band aid. Over time the band aid migrated and did not dissipate the hot spot and I got a burn good enough for a blister and that left a mark. Fortunately over time that faded completely. There’s so many different sensations going on when we’re running something it’s very easy to miss things. Seems like this was pretty mild for you, but we definitely should be on the look out to avoid burns when using heat. We want to improve not step back. Thanks for the reminder.

De nada. If expounding my dumbassery helps anyone from making the same mistakes, we’re all ahead.

This afternoon’s third pump session resulted in half a dozen blocked lymph ducts. Same location as the three I got last year.

I suspect the clamping between pumps may be a contributor.

Lots of abdominal pains yesterday and today. Day before yesterday I was doing snatches again. I got pains after that, too. Today I also got what felt like Charley horses in my abdomen. Ouch. So there are abs hiding under there after all.

More than a decade wearing an abdominal binder and trying to never load my abs has probably made them very weak. Snatches are an "explosive" movement. They’re basically an overhead press from the floor; a normal weightlifting movement, and one I have zero problems with. The difference is that you don’t just lift the weight with a snatch; you yank the sumbitch off the floor and throw it overhead as fast as possible, basically. It stresses a lot of stuff an overhead press doesn’t normally touch. I was doing snatches last November when I tore up that abdominal hernia.

Snatches are *fun*, but I think I need to do some specific "abz!" work for a while and build them up to something closer to normal before doing stuff like snatches.

I went to the nephrology (kidney doctor) clinic for a follow-up visit today. According to them I have a UTI and they’re sending a prescription to my pharmacy. I’ll try to get down to their main office in a day or two and pick up a copy of the labs to see what it is.

He said the labs all looked good otherwise, and they want a follow-up in six months instead of three. This time I dropped back to "low carb" instead of strict keto or carnivore a couple of weeks ahead of time. I’m pretty sure they’re only using the C-Reactive Protein and Creatinine numbers.

I picked up a few UTIs when I was using a penis plug when my meatus was deformed from the staph infection, and every few months or so I would rod out the rest of the urethra with sounds, as I’m prone to getting "strictures" - tight spots - that partially block the flow of urine. But I haven’t sounded or plugged for over a year, because I figured it was the cause of the repeated UTIs. Like my main doc said, "staph is everywhere." I was strict on "clean" and "sterile", but an open-ended plug is, well, open. And urine itself isn’t as sterile as is usually put forth; according to the doc, bacteria can "colonize" and bladder and/or kidneys. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had a UTI but have been asymptomatic. A couple of years ago I was showing *just barely* above the bacteria count to recognize a UTI - like 4999 vs. 5000. The doc said it’s not all that unusual. We talked about it since I was showing no symptoms at all. I opted for "do nothing" instead of another bout of antibiotics, with the idea that indescriminate use of antibiotics tends to breed resistant strains. A view my doc emphatically agrees with, btw.

Since that visit, I’ve tested clean several other times, including two urology labs, four or five nephrology labs, and two ER labs and a hospital admission, so it’s unlikely I’ve been carrying the infection for long. I haven’t done any plugging or sounding, and I wasn’t catheterized when I had surgery last year.

So I’ve made a full circle and I’m back at "WTF UTIs?!" again. Yeah, I do PE, but that really shouldn’t affect things.