Long time, no update... at my last post, it had been three weeks since my surgery. Yesterday was the two month mark. According to the stats I've seen in several resources, 89% percent of guys with my issue say that any gland pain they experienced pre-surgery was completely resolved by having this procedure done. My doc also told me on the day of my last post that two months was average to expect the post-surgery pain to last. I'm two months and one day out now, and I'm still in that other 11% - in fact, yesterday was one of my most painful days in a while, as it was a failed experiment in wearing normal underwear again.
But the pain has improved - quite a lot since my last post. As of about two weeks ago, I was finally able to take a shower without it being a painful experience. And that has remained mostly, though not always, true since then. There are still bad days and good days. I get more throbbing aches now, less pain from incidental contact. At least when there is pain, it's not nauseating or debilitating now. But I still hope that, slower than average or not, the day is coming when I won't have daily pain to remind me of the surgery anymore.
Also concerning is that, other than a big ol' scar and the aforementioned pain, there doesn't seem to be any physical evidence now that the surgery did anything at all. The enlarged veins this was supposed to fix still seem every bit as enlarged as before. But my doctor DID tell me up front that that wouldn't go away, and there's only supposed to be a 1% chance of the issue recurring after this kind of surgery, so I realize that I'm almost certainly worried about nothing. We've still got at least another month to wait yet before any results will show up in my sperm count, so it's still a matter of wait-and-see for now.
It's just that the primary challenge in dealing with this issue has shifted again now, from a physical back to a psychological one. I'm due back at the doc on March 5; he wants a new sperm analysis done just before then. I have no idea what that analysis is going to say. I'm terrified of what it might tell us. I've done two of these already; the first one wasn't a big deal because I didn't know to expect anything bad, the second one wasn't a big deal because we already knew there was a problem, so a bad result wasn't any news at all. But this one will be different. We WANT it to be different, in a good way. I dread it every time I think of it, because I'm afraid of yet another bad result. And what will I do - what will we do - if it IS another bad result? I don't know. I don't know.
All we can do is take it one day at a time, as cliche as that sounds - but it's true. Keep enjoying the time NOT worrying about it that we have for now. And whatever happens in another six weeks... pray a lot. Accept the reality of whatever the results tell us, good or bad. And follow our doctor's advice, along with our own decisions, on where to go from there. That's all we can do.
