Recovery: Day One

I sleep for six hours like a baby, then awake early. Dihydracodeine disappears from the system after about 6 hours, and my penis aches a bit, so I get up and have some food and a drug cocktail before returning to bed for a couple of hours. This was a mistake, I had a sugary breakfast and I think it might be best to stick to six hours sleep for the time being. I don’t sleep well, and after an hour I wake to find bit of ‘morning wood’ causing me some pain. As I do some mathematical problems in my head, it subsides, but every time I drift off it sneaks back up and a few times it is reasonably painful. I give up and begin to face the day.

The chap looks like he's been in a fight. The head of my penis is clearly starting to dry out and the skin is starting to peel. This was expected. There is also dis-colouring, yellow-y black colours are creeping in and I think this is the expected 'bruising'. It is not swollen and I put this down to the strong anti-inflammatory. It doesn't feel as bad as it looks.

I'm not allowed to have a bath for a week because it will encourage the bio-degrading sutures to bio-degrade too soon and I'm not allowed to get it wet in the shower. I plan to use a condom to protect it but for today, I just wash at the sink to save on effort.

I will be returning to work tomorrow and work in a very active environment, there will be twisting, turning, reaching, lifting and I will be on my feet throughout, so I have only today to experiment with clothes. Advice suggests tight underwear to keep everything in place, and loose outerwear so as not to rub. I choose to go to the underwear extreme and try some lycra shorts I use for cycling. I only have one pair, so I wear some additional cotton underwear underneath at the risk of it being a little warm down there. I don’t have any of the skater jeans I used to have as a teenager, such is the fashion now, but I pick the loosest I can find. Getting dressed is uncomfortable and I recommend putting your socks on before anything else, bending over becomes more difficult after the ‘chap’ is held in place.

The tight cycling shorts are effective and I find myself moving around with relative ease. Bending over is difficult, but I'm happy to go to work tomorrow. I stop taking the dihydracodeine.

Disaster in the evening when the dressing fails. It just slipped off in the cycling shorts. Luckily I bought some gauze dressing and fabric sticky stuff during the day and am able to re-dress. Which is a fiddly process.