Common Penis Problems: True Stories and Expert Insight

“Common Penis Problems: True Stories + Expert Insight”

a lightly edited Girl Boner Radio transcript

Don:

So it felt like—what would it be like? Like if you overworked out something maybe? I don’t know. It was really sore and tender and it didn’t feel right. And that was going on for a bit and I go, “What is this?” I thought, Oh, it’s just some pain. And sometimes in life, it is best to ignore pains. They go away.

August (narration):

Only they didn’t go away. 

That was playwright, author and actor Don Cummings, and he’s talking about his penis. Not long after noticing those symptoms, he realized he had Peyronie’s disease.

Like pretty much all body parts, the penis can develop health issues that can range from mild to severe. But given cultural messages about sex, genitals, and gender — what it means for a cisgender man to have a quote “imperfect” penis — it’s easy to feel shame or confusion. These things are talked about a lot more than they once were, thankfully, partly thanks to experts such as Dr. Lamia Gabal. 

Dr. Gabal is a board-certified urologist with more than 20 years of experience in the field. We spoke recently about common penis problems, two of which we’ve explored here with true, personal stories in years past. Today you’ll hear highlights from those stories.

You’ll also hear Dr. Gabal’s thoughts on common penis issues she treats in her office. More than anything else, she said, she sees men who are struggling with erectile dysfunction. 

As a side note, Dr. Gabal has only treated a few transgender people through the years, and said she wishes she saw more in her office. Today when she refers to men she’s talking about cisgender men—although the same issues can absolutely impact anyone with a penis: including ED: the inability to have an erection or keep it going during sex.

Dr. Gabal

Many men are afraid to talk about it, because they don’t realize that it’s something that happens to everyone or almost everyone as they get older. 

August (narration):

She said that fear of talking about it was even more prevalent during her residency at UC San Diego. There were no Viagra commercials on TV. In fact, Viagra wasn’t even around yet. It was approved by the FDA to treat “impotence” in 1998, and became a near-instant success. The pills that cost $8-10 yielded about a billion dollars in sales in the first year.

Dr. Gabal:

It was a long time ago and back then, we thought oh, erectile dysfunction is all in your head. And so men would come and some would want some treatment and we had nothing really to offer them. 

The only thing we really had for more advanced erectile dysfunction—and we still offer these things now but it’s much more rare that we have to go there—would be injections for ED, certain medication that can be injected into the penis. And then also inflatable penile prosthesis.

August (narration):

Viagra and similar medications, like Cialis, enhance the effects of nitric oxide in your body: a natural chemical that relaxes muscles in the penis and increases blood flow. Injections stimulate blood flow, too.

When these treatments don’t work and the cause seems physiological, your doctor might recommend a penis pump or implant. A pump involves a tube inserted into your penis. It uses a vacuum technique to pull blood in. Then you place a ring over your penis, like a cock ring, to keep it firm. Dr. Gabal said there are different types of implants. They can be firm or malleable. 

She told me she’s really grateful that Viagra is commonplace today, a “household name like Kleenex.”

Dr. Gabal:

And I think they did us such a huge favor by bringing this out in the open and having commercials and talking about it. And it really just normalized it for men to be able to talk about it. 

August: 

Dr. Gabal pointed out that there have been many other advancements for treating ED in recent years, too, such as shockwave treatments and the P-shot, which uses PRP therapy. 

Dr. Gabal:

Shockwave treatments have been used for many, many years for things like kidney stone breakage and also for orthopedic treatments for joints and muscles and tendon repair. And so that’s now translated into our field for erectile dysfunction and female sexual dysfunction. And it also translates into that. It’s just wonderful the things that are on the horizon for erectile dysfunction and other entities that we treat in urology.

August (narration):

One common myth Dr. Gabal finds herself confronting in terms of ED is that it only affects older adults.

Dr. Gabal:  

And there’s a little visual that I have. This is a 20-year-old, a 30-year-old, a 40-year-old, a 50-year-old and a 60-year-old.

August (narration):

She spread her hand out wide in front of her. Her palm was facing her chest, and spread her fingers apart. And her thumb was at the top, representing a 20-year-old with a penis that’s nearly vertical, it’s so erect. Almost bending backward. Once you reach the pinky finger, it’s angled down, kind of toward the ground.

Dr. Gabal:  

So, it usually is a natural progression and interestingly, [draws out word for emphasis] it probably matches to a woman’s childbearing years and also postmenopausal state. 

Those are kind of normal—I’m doing air quotes. Those are “normal” things that happen as we age. But we all know that it’s okay to fight things that are normal aging processes. And so there’s so many things that we can offer to fight against that normal, quote unquote, normal aging process. 

And we always say that a dysfunction is only such if one or both of the partners feel that it is. I have many couples who are in their 50s who aren’t interested in sex and that’s fine if both partners are okay with that. And I’ve got couples in their 90s, you know, who would freak out if they don’t have another erection the next day, right? 

So it’s very person specific. And either way is okay. And again, we just have to normalize that it’s whatever that person, you know, is comfortable with.

August (narration):  

Back in the very early days of Girl Boner, I interviewed Gabe Deem, a writer, speaker and the founder of Reboot Nation, about his experience with porn addiction. He was in his early 20s, when, well, using the hand diagram, his erections during sex with a partner should have been more thumb, straight-up-in-the-air and were more like the downward pinkie.

I should mention that porn addiction is a controversial term in the sex ed and sex therapy fields. Many people prefer terms like sexual compulsions. Personally, I don’t care what you call it. If you’re struggling, you’re struggling. If porn fits healthfully into your life and relationship, great. If it doesn’t, I want you to get all the support you need–including with any related ED issues.

August (narration):

Here is Gabe’s story, starting with a bit of history. He told me he started masturbating to images aftering finding a Playboy magazine stashed in the bushes when he was 8 or 9 years old. He said things escalated a year or two later, when his family got cable TV. He started staying up late at night, until 2 or 3 in the morning, watching softcore porn.

While a lot of that seemed normal and he wasn’t ashamed, his porn use started to impact his wellbeing. 

Gabe:

That’s when I guess you could say it became a problem because I was neglecting sleep. So I could stay up late at night and watch hours and hours of this stuff. And then it took a real big turn for the worst whenever my family got high speed internet.

August (narration):

That was back in 1999/2000. Now, he had unlimited access to high speed porn.

Gabe:

I was a seventh grader at the time. I could come home and watch whatever I wanted to watch for a couple of hours before my parents got home. It wasn’t that big of a deal to me, you know? It was “normal.” Kids at school were talking about it. 

What I was watching began to escalate into more hardcore material. You know, I wasn’t just looking at topless girls. Now I was watching gang bangs, deep throat, all sorts of stuff by the time I was 13. So this carried over into how I started interacting with girls at school. 

August (narration):

During the 6th grade, he had phone sex with a girl.

Gabe:

The stuff I learned from these TV shows, I was trying to get the girl to do them on the phone with me. And then I became sexually active around age 14. And this continued through high school, and into college. 

My high school was the first high school to get laptops. All the students got issued laptops. 

August (narration):

One of his classmates, a “computer whiz,” taught him how to jack off without getting caught. He handed him the tips on a slip of paper. 

Gabe said that many kids learned how to work around the adult content barriers quickly. He recalls watching porn during class. All the while, he wasn’t feeling ashamed of it — it just seemed “normal.” He just felt he was pursuing pleasure.

After he graduated from high school, though, Gabe said things started to change.

Gabe:

Going into college, I began to notice my drive for life decreasing. I was losing motivation. I didn’t care about getting a good job, getting a family – things that used to be important to me. I quit basketball. I just really didn’t care about anything. But I didn’t really notice that. I thought I was just your normal punk kid. But something else caught my attention. 

And that was when I was around 22, I was going to have sex with a beautiful girl and I couldn’t get an erection. I freaked out. I had no idea what was wrong with me. And I blew it off that time. And then another year later, I got with a girl that I really found attractive, real gorgeous, everything I wanted. 

And again, I couldn’t get an erection at all. And so I started Googling. And it took me about a month but I found a thread of hundreds and thousands of guys talking about erectile dysfunction, and they were teenagers all the way to 80 years old. And they all had one thing in common: years of porn use, but they couldn’t get an erection to their partner. 

August (narration):

What they shared in common was years of porn use, and an inability to get an erection for a partner — only from porn.

Gabe: 

This one guy posted a test to do he was like, “Okay, see if you can masturbate without porn.” And I hadn’t done this in forever. Probably the last time I did this was 14, because I always had a PlayStation, portable laptop or my phone or something to watch porn while I masturbate. So I hadn’t done in it a while. And I was like, Wait. Let me try this. 

August (narration):

He tried it, and he could not get an erection with his hand alone, without watching porn.

Gabe:

And then I even tried to do some fantasy. I was thinking about the freakiest stuff I could and stroking myself as hard as I could, and I still couldn’t even get a slight, semi erection. And that was when it all hit me. I realized that porn was the cause and I broke down crying. 

During my Google search, I was searching all over the place. And all I could find was, if you’re young and you can’t get it up, you’re just nervous. It’s performance anxiety.

August (narration):

But he knew that wasn’t the case. He felt confident and had had a lot of sexual experience. Plus he had no reason to “perform” for anyone when he was by himself. He just couldn’t achieve an erection without porn.

Once he realized that, he dove into educating himself. While doing so, he found a website, yourbrainonporn.com, that features information on the neuroscience behind what he was experiencing. It has all kinds of links to studies. 

Gabe:

And I was reading about how I sexually conditioned my brain to get turned on by screens. And also, I’d numbed my reward circuit in my brain. There’s actually some evidence now that that’s the case.

August (narration):

He did what’s called a reboot, where you give up porn for some amount of time, to get back to being able to be aroused by a physical person. 

He went cold turkey and experienced some withdrawal. And others in a similar place have asked him how he could give porn up so quickly after being so dependent on it. 

Gabe:

I guess to get real sentimental and on an emotional level, being as I was, a 23 year old guy, at the time and having a girl that I loved and I cared about just that feeling of her trying to give me an erection, doing everything she can, and just seeing no response in my penis and just seeing tears well up in her eyes, thinking that it’s her when I knew that it wasn’t her, that feeling was such a kick in my gut that I guess you could say I hit rock bottom. Once I realized that I screwed myself up by watching all this porn, that was when I really had a heart change and I no longer desire porn.

[upbeat, acoustic music]

August (narration):

At first he kept his dependency on porn a secret from his girlfriend at the time, but when he finally told her, he said she was so relieved to understand that it wasn’t her; she wasn’t causing his erectile problems. He told her he had “wired his brain to pixels and not people.”

Gabe is married now and he and his wife are celebrating the birth of their first baby.

I mentioned Gabe’s experience with Dr. Gabal and asked her about her take on erectile dysfunction related to porn use.

Dr. Gabal:  

So, the brain is the biggest sexual organ that we have, right? And I just think it’s fascinating how much control our brain has over our bodies, physiologically. And the more that we learn, we realize the more that we don’t understand about these things. And that’s why I love medicine, because every day we just learn more and more about how things work, and at least how we think things work, and how we can maybe fix those things that are broken. 

August (narration):

She shared an example of something she learned recently that she feels speaks to this. It came out of the Olympics.

Dr. Gabal:

I thought it was super interesting that when Simone Biles, you know, came out because of her mental health, I learned from some physicians they are called performance doctors so they specialize in performance medicine, which is something I’ve never even heard of. 

And so one of the things that they talked about, is that athletes, when they do a repetitive motion, there is actually a pathway that over develops in the brain. 

August (narration):

And they can get stuck in that repetitive motion, she said, because the nerves in the brain are being rewired.

Dr. Gabal:

And then the natural instinct is to do more of that repetitive motion when really that works against you when you’re trying to break something—like they were talking about her having “the twisties.”

August (narration):

Simone Biles told reporters that “the twisties” made it impossible for her to tell up from down.  

Dr. Gabal:

There really is some physiologic evidence to why this happens. So there is a physiologic reason for this neurologic pathway that builds. 

August (narration):

In terms of being dependent on porn, she said: 

Dr. Gabal:

Some people are more visual, some people are more verbal, but you need something to help to stimulate you. Some people fantasize during intercourse, or whatever kind of sex they’re having, to help them to be able to orgasm. 

It is very possible to become dependent on that neural pathway. I mean, there’s a physiologic reason for it. But in order to break that dependency, you have to kind of get out of that pattern and build new neural pathways. 

And it’s okay to use porn, it’s okay to use fantasy but if it becomes a dysfunction, then I think it is time to rewire.

[upbeat, acoustic music]

August (narration):

Other common penis conditions Dr. Gabal sees in her office include balanitis, priopism, paraphimosis and Peyronie’s disease. Before we delved into them, she pointed out why, as a urologist, she is a big fan of circumcision.

Dr. Gabal:  

And I know again, there’s a lot of controversy around circumcision or not, but we tend to see a lot of the complications that can happen later in life or even in some pediatric cases for uncircumcised men. And so penile cancer is one thing that happens only in uncircumcised men. 

August (narration):

Penile cancer accounts for only about 1 in 100,000 penis havers in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society. Among those who are uncircumcised, that number is 1 in 600.

Dr. Gabal:  

We now know that there’s also a correlation with HPV. All young people should be vaccinated for HPV, male or female, but especially if a man is not circumcised. It’s super important to be vaccinated against HPV because that is the one thing that’s been associated with penile cancer, and I, unfortunately, had a very young patient who presented (when I was a resident) in his 30s, late 30s, with penile cancer ended up dying. It’s not common, but if a man is circumcised it just doesn’t happen. And so again as a urologist, you’ll find that most of us are very big fans of circumcision. 

So balanitis, balanoposthitis. Those are inflammatory processes of the penis, the skin or the, you know, the shaft or the head of the penis. And again, more common 99% of these happen only in uncircumcised men, especially if a man’s diabetic. They get – They’re more prone to infections, yeast infections, really any type of infections at the tip of the penis at the head of the penis.

August (narration):

There’s also phimosis and paraphimosis. (Why do I feel like those’ll be be Jeopardy questions, if they haven’t already?) Phimosis happens when the foreskin is too tight to be pulled back over the head of the penis. This can stem from repeated inflammatory problems from balanitis or balanoposthitis.

There’s also a dangerous form of phimosis called paraphimosis, where a tight foreskin becomes trapped behind the head of the penis.

Dr. Gabal:

…where it can actually strangulate the head of the glands and that’s an emergency. They have to go into the emergency room to have that reduced to have the foreskin brought back down. 

So these are not uncommon things that we see in our practice as urologists. And again, we’re probably a little bit biased because we see the complications. We don’t see the normal uncircumcised penises. And I’m sure there’s many, many of those out there. But these are things that happen in uncircumcised men. 

August (narration):

Then there’s priapism, a condition in which an erection lasts and lasts and…lasts.

Dr. Gabal:  

So I always tell my patients, it sounds like a good thing. It’s not, you know, to have an erection for four hours. And it is something that is one of the few urologic emergencies where the man would have to go to the emergency room and then be injected with different medications to try and get the erection to go down. 

Because not only is it very painful – Well, the most common type of priapism is what’s called low-flow priapism, which is venous, and it’s very painful. The blood becomes stagnant. It actually clots in the corpora cavernosa. And the biggest risk is if it’s not attended to very early, is that they can get erectile dysfunction. Because the corpora cavernosa will completely scar down, and they can no longer get blood flow to the penis for an erection. So priapism is an emergency. It’s not uncommon in this age where, you know, people might get medications online. 

I remember a time not that long ago where I had a patient who took his partner’s medication. His partner was prescribed an injection for his erectile dysfunction so they decided to share it. 

August (narration):

The problem was, the dosage was incorrect. So he had a painful erection that wouldn’t let up. He went to see Dr. Gabal in the middle of the night. She treated it with injectable medications. The moral of that story is, don’t share ED medications.  Only take them under a doctor’s care.

[upbeat, acoustic music]

Another condition that many penis havers struggle with is premature ejaculation, or PE. It’s characterized by three main symptoms:

• Always or nearly always ejaculating within a minute of penetration
• Being unable to delay ejaculation during intercourse, always or most of the time
• Feeling really distressed and frustrated

As a result of these symptoms, you may avoid sexual intimacy. Your desire may go down.

If you struggle with PE or you just want  to stay hard longer, or your partner wants to stay hard longer, during sex I can’t recommend Promescent enough. Their delay spray won’t transfer to your partner or make sex not fun any more, It’s been shown to increase orgasms. It’s also long-lasting and easy to use. They offer free shipping over $10 and orders arrive in non-branded packaging to protect your privacy.

To save 15% on your first Promescent order, use the promo code in the episode or click here.

Before I share Don Cummings’ story, about his experience with Peyronie’s disease, I have a question for you. When you heard today’s episode featured a urologist, were you surprised to learn she’s female? If so, don’t feel too bad about it. There still aren’t very many women in the urology field, so relatively few people encounter one. 

In a study that looked at 9,600 urologists in the U.S., researchers at Northwestern University found that only about 8-12 percent are women. Dr. Gabal has wanted to help change that since she discovered the path for herself.

Dr. Gabal:  

You know, believe it or not, I did not grow up thinking I was going to be a urologist.You know, my parents would tell me we came here to the US for better opportunities for you. And I kind of knew that my destiny was to go to medical school but I loved every single rotation that I did. Okay, now I’m going to be a pediatrician. Now I’m going to be this. Now I’m going to be that. 

August (narration):

Urology was literally her last rotation, in her third year in medical school, for surgery. She wanted to take plastic surgery and ENT, ears, nose and throat, for her two specialty electives. She ended up with plastic surgery and urology.

Dr. Gabal:

And I said, “What the heck is this? Who wants to be a urologist? I don’t even know what they do!” I tried to trade it. I tried to give it to you know – No one wanted to take it; they didn’t know what they did. And so I ended up doing this as a rotation and absolutely loved it. 

And, you know, urologists are generally kind of fun people. We have good sense of humor. It was a really good blend of medicine and surgery. A lot of people don’t realize that urologists are surgeons. It’s a surgical specialty. It’s a long residency. It’s six years. The other thing is that there really needed to be more women. 

And that’s what I saw when I was there. Obviously very male dominated field. And people think of urology specifically as a male gynecologist, I think, but it’s really not. I mean we treat bladder cancer, kidney stones. 

August (narration):

When she started in the field, women accounted for only 4% of urologists. That’s at least doubled since then.

Dr. Gabal:

So I tell my male patients it’s good to have a female urologist. We have smaller fingers than the guys so it’s good for the rectal exam, right? 

I think most people just want a good physician, a good surgeon. Most people don’t really care the gender. I would think most people don’t care the gender of their physician. And it’s just nice to have a choice if you do care. Because a lot  – For a lot of years, women did not have the choice to see a female anything. And now, you know, if you really do have a preference, that there are people you can choose from.

[upbeat, acoustic music]

August (narration):

When Don Cummings spotted the signs of Peyronie’s disease, he sought a good physical pretty quickly. We spoke about his experience in the studio a couple of years ago when his memoir, Bent But Not Broken, had just been released. Here is much of that conversation, which I think really highlights the emotional toll these types of conditions can take, the ways they can impact intimacy and relationships and the importance of committing to effective treatment.

We started by talking about the first signs of the disease he noticed.

Don:

  

You know, men often have erections when they’re sleeping. And especially if you have to urinate, a man will get an erection which will hold the urine better or something. I don’t know. 

But I started noticing that at night like I’d wake up in the middle of the night and my erections just hurt like a hurt that was like. [musing tone] What was the pain like? It was like somewhat burning and constricting and like sore. 

August: Sounds like a bladder infection almost. 

Don:

Yeah, yeah, it was. But it wasn’t in the urethra. It was in the tissue. 

So it felt like—what would it be like? Like if you overworked out something maybe? I don’t know. It was like really sore and tender and it didn’t feel right. And that was going on for a bit and I go, “What is this?” I thought, Oh, it’s just some pain. And sometimes in life, it is best to ignore pains. They go away.

And then a few weeks in I noticed that my penis at the top started bending to the right. And because I do have a background in knowing about diseases and things because of my degree or this or that or being interested. I knew I had Peyronie’s disease.

August:

Did you have a sense of oh, this is treatable, not treatable, that kind of stuff?

Don:

I didn’t know and I didn’t know exactly what caused it. I didn’t know how this happened. I figured it had something to do with inflammation, but the doctor kind of clued me in as to the very specifics of how this happens to you. 

August:

I remember when I was reading your book from the time that you noticed the symptoms, you didn’t go in immediately. But I think was it within like two months or something?

Don: Yeah, two months.

August:

And when I saw that I thought, how could you wait two months? And then you went in and the doctor said it’s so good you came in so quickly. Because typically it takes a much longer time.

Don:

Yeah, the doctor said gay men who have Peyronie’s disease come in sooner than straight men because gay men are more identify with their penises. Uhm, yeah. Yeah, guys will wait for a really long time though. As a matter of fact they’ll wait so long that it can’t be treated. 

How it works is there’s some sort of injury, maybe it’s just repeated – Might be the way you have sex. You might hit the same spot over and over again. I think that’s—in my theory—That’s more what it’s like. Like, Oh, I’m just doing this certain way, and it’s kind of just hitting that spot. And it’s, like, just getting messed up, you know. 

Some people do—like you told me about, you know, penis fracture—but there could be something where you have a really harsh sex night, and you can get like hurt, maybe not a full fracture but hurt, you know. I don’t think that happened to me. I think mine would have been for more repetitive motion. 

But what happens is you get scar tissue, just like you would get scar tissue from anything, and then it sandwiches there, between your erectile tubes, the corpora cavernosa and the outer layer, which is called the tunica albuginea.

So as scar tissue calcifies it’s much more difficult to treat. That’s why so if you get Peyronie’s disease get it taken care of, you know, ASAP. Because while it’s still soft, the scar tissue’s still soft, they can treat it and kind of open it up. Get it more pliable. Turn it from, you know, cheddar to Swiss, basically. [laughter]

August:  

And the treatment process is very interesting. It sounds like there’s not like a one size fits all treatment, right? And you went through multiple different forms. The first one. Talk about that. I believe it involved the injections.

Don:  

Yeah. So in my case, so XIAFLEX… It was not approved by the FDA yet. That was not available to me and that is what they’re using these days. But I was treated with something called Verapamil. 

Verapamil is actually a blood pressure medication. It was not made for Peyronie’s disease but someone figured out that if you mix Verapamil with saline, put it in a needle, go under the skin of the penis, go in there and just kind of break up that scar tissue with this needle saline of Verapamil. 

And they first, obviously, numb you, you know, with lidocaine, and the first shot, you know, they give you the base of the penis. They numb you. And then they go in there with a needle. They’ll go in there and kind of do 30 or 40 bangs with this needle with the Verapamil and the saline. 

It’s interesting. They go in just one hole in your penis, and my plaque was toward the top, toward the end where my penis head. So they go in with the needle, just in one place, and then they kind of just move it in many directions. Because once you get under the penis skin, it’s kind of open up in there, you know, and you can just kind of go – So they stab around just keep squirting, stabbing, squirting, stabbing and break it up.

August:  

And you were watching, I imagine. I think I would have to look away, myself.

Don: 

Let me see. Yeah, sometimes I peeked but it actually wasn’t that freakish to watch because there wasn’t anything much. There’s a needle there… Those treatments would take about 15 minutes. That’s a long time to just sort of be sitting there having someone, you know, stabbing around in there? Maybe? Maybe it was 10 minutes, but felt like 15.

August:  

And then you were bandaged up and you have bruising and all that. Was it a painful recovery process, inbetween?

Don: 

Yeah, well, so I went every two weeks. It was bruised looking. Because if you go under the skin and do something like this you get bruised but it didn’t really hurt that much, honestly. It really didn’t. 

As a matter of fact, I was so relieved I was getting the treatments that once the lidocaine wore off and the numbing wore off, about two hours later when I was at home, like yeah, it felt [chuckles] like someone was in there stabbing around in my penis but it’s a small gauge needle. It’s not like they’re in there with a hacksaw, you know, so. 

But what I liked was after each treatment, very much you feel looser, you feel that you have been released some. More than anything the psychological relief of like, Oh, my penis is hanging better. Oh, it’s not being pulled up from my body like it was, you know, from the scar tissue. Oh, this feels better. That totally outshined the soreness, which was minor, honestly. 

August: 

That’s so good because I feel like the prospect of pain would keep some people from feeling comfortable getting the treatment. So I think that’s really good to know. 

Talk about the Andropenis because that was really fascinating to me, this stretching of the penis, essentially. 

Don:  

Sure, sure. I mean, there are many companies. My doctor recommended, you know, he recommended the Andropenis because he said it worked well. I still have it. And I actually still use it one hour a day as I read the New Yorker in the morning. 

It’s basically this crazy thing where at the base is like a doughnut, a plastic doughnut thing. And then these two extender rods that are on spring action. And you can add these little half-centimeter discs to these rods to make them longer and longer over time. But you start with no longer than how long your penis is erect at that time, because Peyronie’s disease does shorten your erection some. 

So you start at that distance and you put it on. And what it does, it’s basically like a traction device. So it’s pulling your penis in a straight forward motion so it’s not leaning to the right or the left or up towards your belly. So you start for a couple weeks just regular, you don’t even feel it, and then after two weeks, you add a half a centimeter and then you do that for a couple weeks and you add a half a centimeter. 

Now in the early, I mean you if you can wear the thing eight hours a day— it’s almost impossible to do that—you just, life’s too difficult to do that. But in the early part, I was wearing it like six hours a day. I do three hours in the morning and three hours at night watch. I did it.  I was so diligent because, you know, it really helps and it really works and what you’re doing is you’re stretching the scar tissue is really what’s mostly happening. And you definitely felt looser and better, you know, once you had your daily treatment. 

But it’s quite a commitment, I have to say. Most guys I talked to who get an Andropenis or another brand penis stretcher. Like I’ve talked to guys who just like, “Oh god, how do you have the time? What do you do?” And I was like, “I don’t have a normal job. I’m a freelance guy.” I had the time and also the, you know, complete and utter motivation. Because you know, the protocol works, so why not do it?

[upbeat, acoustic music]

August:  

I remember reading in your book about your concerns over your partner’s sense of loss. How impactful was that on your own psyche?

Don:

Yeah, that was the most difficult part, actually. You know… [emotional pause] 

So, it’s a double thing going on, right? There’s me, and there’s him. So there’s his reaction, and there’s my reaction. My reaction is I’m feeling like I’m depleted, I have less. I’m not who I was. I’m less attractive now. And I’m less valuable in bed. Really, it was that simple; it was that mercenary. 

And then for Adam, his loss was like…You know, I’m more of the top, in the gay parlance here. Actually, in straight parlances are top and bottom? 

August:  

There are sometimes, yeah.

Don:

Okay. So, I’m more the top. So that was off the table for a little while, while I was being treated. I would say that was off the table for around nine months, you know, maybe nine or 10 months. And we didn’t know if it was gonna. It’s back. But we didn’t know if it was coming back, and it led to a lot of problems. It ended up bringing up other issues. 

But getting back more specifically to what you were asking. I mean, I mean psychologically, and, you know, my mood was brought way down. And I was, I was very upset. 

I’m not a depressive in general in life. If I had to—like say I was more one or the other between depression and anxious—I would say I’m more of a kind of anxious, go get ‘em kind of guy. So I wasn’t depressed but I was actively miserable. 

I was an actively miserable person, which maybe [chuckles] saved me from clinical depression. But I just kind of hated living. I did. I felt like, why bother? I’d look at marble tile on my bathroom and go like, I just want to become part of the wall. I felt that I was going through a transition. I didn’t know how it was going to end. And I started thinking, we’re heading for the worst here, you know? 

And for Adam, he stayed in there with me. But you know how in a relationship like you’ll be saying one thing on the outside but inside, you’re doing something else? Well, that’s what he did. So he was very supportive but internally, he started pulling away from me. He did. 

And we actually did get into an almost breaking up situation. And I, you know, took a sort of balance sheet look at my life. And I figured, well, if this happens, and we break up, you know, I will, I’ll carry on. My penis will get—. 

And actually, when we got so close to the breaking up thing, my penis was in a better shape. He waited until I was about three quarters done with this. And he—and it was rough—and he’ll admit it and it wasn’t very nice on his part. And he did say “ feel terribly guilty breaking up with you because you have Peyronie’s disease.” 

But then, you know, we had gotten to in our own relationship points in the past, before all this happened, where we come to, like, breakup points, you know, where it was like, “I hate you, I hate you. You don’t touch me. You don’t love me. What’s wrong? You won’t even close the cabinet? Why don’t you make more money? Why don’t you do this, why don’t you do that?” And it’s that all resentful shit that happens in relationships. So it was like the same old shit kind of piled up at this time again, too. 

August:  

Came to the fore, like everything came together.

Don:

Yeah. It was like broken record thing. And I think that’s how I defused it. It was like, Listen, this is the thing. This is our relationship problem that repeats itself. And, you know, and I looked at him. 

And he had just, he had had a few years before that – He had a horrible skin cancer on his face, and he lost like half his nose, and I had to redo it. And it was just like, “Listen, dude [lighthearted voice and both laugh].” It’s like—

August: 

“I was there for you.’

Don:

Well and also, some things are gonna happen to us. As you get older things are gonna happen. Like, you hang in there or like, what? Something else is gonna happen. This isn’t it.

August:

It’s life.

Don:

Something else is gonna happen, and you don’t wish it on anyone but let’s be realistic here. I mean, look at your parents. Look at anyone who’s older than you. Look at people who are younger than you. Things happen.

August:

Right, right. That’s the nature of relationships. We go through hard times. And you pulled through and actually got officially married after that, right? Which is really awesome. 

I imagine with Peyronie’s disease, contributing to that whole kind of volcano of things, that a big part of it must have been the emotional impact on you, you know, not just the changes in sex, but also, I think it’s challenging to go through the emotional lows with a person.

Don: 

Are you talking about him or more about me?

August:

I guess, between both of you, because I feel like, there’s almost like there’s the physical part of Peyronie’s disease and then the emotional part is a whole other illness almost—not illness, but it’s this whole other set of symptoms. 

Don:

And depending on how your psyche is formed, right? I mean, for me, I definitely identified with being sexual and being attractive and knowing that I could go to a convention in a hotel and someone would like me. [flirtatious voice] We’d go hook up, you know. I liked all that. So that is loss. 

And then I felt, yeah, I felt [emotional pause] – I just felt just a general bad about myself. I was just not going to be as desired. And I think also – look, I was an actor. I mean, obviously, I was someone who liked to be watched and listened to. And you know, I’m not even so proud of that stuff. But definitely I’m someone for, whatever reason, who enjoyed attention, got attention, enjoyed attention. And I was really upset that that was – I perceived that was going away. And truthfully, it did go away. So like I said, I was actively miserable.

August:

And were you getting any sort of emotional support? Or did your doctor say it’s also good to see a therapist through this process?

Don:  

You know, he didn’t say that. And I was not seeing a therapist at that point. But actually, after everything, I started seeing a therapist because I was also in New York. The reason why we were back in New York—you know, we live here (LA)—but we were back in New York was because I was in the middle of a career thing where I had a play. 

Meryl Streep, lovingly enough, did a reading of a play of mine at The Public Theater. And her son, Henry Wolfe, who’s a musician and an actor, he was in the play, and that’s how that all happened. Amazing experience. 

So I was with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and my play was optioned for Broadway. This is all happening. I’m going to Broadway, man. And it died. It just died. Like the reason we moved to New York died. So I went to New York with my perfect penis to be this big Broadway playwright. And instead what I got was WHAA, WHAA. [singsong tone]

You know, I got messed up penis, and the play didn’t happen. And I was hired to also write a screenplay. And that didn’t go and things just were not happening. So then, so adding to my act of misery was like bad penis, career failing yet again, you know, so I was just like, this is just all too much. I couldn’t find anything really kind of good about my situation. And finally, I just had to go see a shrink. 

So yeah, and interestingly, after all was said and done, the emotional issues, because everyone has their base emotional problem, mine turned out to be [starts to chuckle], surprise, the attention and stuff. You know, my deepest one was abandonment. That’s my deepest thing. And so – And there it all came up. In a way it was a good lesson, like. 

The Broadway people were abandoning me. My future husband was abandoning me. My penis was abandoning me, my body was abandoning me. Like everything wasn’t staying with me. And we moved from Midtown, toward Fort Tryon Park, way northern Manhattan, beautiful up there. Lots of plants and skunks and stuff. And we moved and it was fine. It was a good move. It was a great apartment. I was walking around a little village up there and I’m just sobbing. 

But there was something about this visceral, complete and utter abandonment, kinda like Tom Hanks in “Big,” when he’s left in New York… He’s in a room and he’s terrified. I think my childhood, whatever came up, full-blown abandonment, but it was good. 

And that actually happened. I was in therapy for a few months; like, my therapist was good. And he sort of – He just, you know, a therapist, a good one, will do. The issue was forced, and I had to face this, like, monster abandonment that I have in my psyche.

August:  

And you get all this healing almost, like a healing opportunity from all of this stuff coming up.

Don:  

Yeah, I really did. So that was the silver lining of the Peyronie’s disease. It was like one of – It was the biggest one of all that was happening to me because I’ve dealt with so much rejection in the past, anyway. But the penis one was just; it was like outrageous.

August:  

So you were able to start that healing process before you knew if you would be as healthy as you are.

Don:  

Because the doctor stuff got me back to about 75-80%, that was around when I started seeing the therapist. So I was starting to transition into a better mood or getting to some sort of acceptance.

[emotional, acoustic music]

August:

You’re in a much better place with all of this. Would you speak to the rewards of this whole journey, in addition to the emotional benefits that you just talked about, treatment wise and Peyronie’s disease wise?

Don:

Oh sure. Yeah, yeah. I guess I’ll just be really specific about it. Um, my penis bent to the right and then to the left and then curved upward. It kept changing shape. And this often happens with Peyronie’s disease. 

My penis is now almost straight. It curves a teeny bit upward now toward my stomach when it’s erect but a lot of penises do that. So it’s no big deal, doesn’t look abnormal. It works really well I would say. I don’t know that it’s any shorter because it’s slightly curved. I guess if you’d measure it, it seems a little shorter because it’s curved but it’s probably around six inches still, maybe it’s five and three quarters, you know, but really, no, the curve is not bad. It’s a little bit up toward my belly. My penis is almost back to its original thickness. Because the other thing about Peyronie’s disease is you get constriction so your penis will become less thick, it kind of thins out, which is a bummer. 

August:  

You lose girth.

Don:

Yeah, there you go, girth. I would say that’s at 97%. I mean that really came back. Interestingly, the Andropenis, the penis stretcher, it doesn’t only stretch. It actually ends up by the tension of stretching, giving you girth again, and they talk about that. So that’s really good. 

Sexual function, you know, you can lose some sexual function from this. Basically, I’m fine. I do not need even to take Viagra or anything like that.

If we’re just, you know, doing basically oral or hands sex, but when it does come time, if I want to be the top and I really want to, you know, do some insertion, I take 10 milligrams of Viagra, and there is, just like no question. It works beautifully. 

And I’m in my 50s, lots of guys in 50s are popping 10 milligrams of Viagra. Pop it, go and about 40 minutes after it’s ready and it, you know, it’s working. It’s working great.

[acoustic, upbeat music]

August (narration):

Find Don’s book, Bent But Not Broken: A Memoir, most anywhere books are sold. It’s available in paperback, digital and audiobook form. He told me he’s currently working on a novel, a love story that takes place during the formation of a gun-free nation. You can sign up for his newsletter at Doncummings.net and follow his graphic novel about Zombies taking over Los Angeles on Instagram: @OhthehorrorLA.

Learn more about Dr. Lamia Gabal’s work at drgabal.com and more about Gabe Deem at rebootnation.org. 

For bonus content for this episode, including Dr. Gabal’s early learnings about sexuality and her advice for aspiring female urologists, or really any woman in a male-dominated field, join my community at patreon.com/girlboner. I would love to have you join me and get access to bonuses like that one and more. 

You can also support the show by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes and telling your friends about it. 

Thanks so much for listening and have a beautiful, Girl Boner-embracing week.