The recovery room/ timings of surgery

The next thing you know, you will be waking up feeling very drowsy and tired. You will probably be in what is called the ‘recovery room’, which is where they keep you until you are fully awake before sending you back to your room/ward. The nurses will keep a very close eye on you hear whilst getting on with their other jobs! At this point you should be focussing on relaxing. If you feel like you’re going back to sleep, don’t fight it.

Here are some timings to try and make a little more sense of it for you.

Time spent travelling to theatre and being put asleep = no more than 10 minutes

Time spent under general anaesthetic (during which time the surgery takes place) = around 40-45 minutes. I have been told that the surgery itself takes only around 20 minutes to perform.

Time waking up in the recovery room = I guess around 20-30 minutes.

Then back to the ward! All done.

Being under general anaesthetic

If you haven’t been under general anaesthetic before, I will try to explain how it feels so that you know what to expect. When the anaesthetist pressed the syringe, I felt a small, almost insignificant amount of tingling in my hand near the cannula. I decide at this point to lay back and shut my eyes. I just felt really, really sleepy – like I had just woken up from a long lay-in. Personally, it felt like ‘choosing to go asleep’ but it just happened very quickly. Again, other people experience slightly different sensations, but all of them are good and relaxing! From leaving my bed on the ward to being put under took no more than around 7 minutes in total. It isn’t a long or drawn out process. Once they give you the needle, you are out within about 5 seconds!

When you are asleep, you do not experience anything. You have no sensation of anything that happens whilst you are under. You do not dream. You are not aware that anything is happening to you. In effect, it is like no time passes. Very hard to explain until you have it done; but, again, quite cool! 

The surgery!

At around 11AM, the nurse came and told me it was time to go. So I walked with her down to the theatre. It’s a pretty short walk so it didn’t take long. Your hospital gown will probably be open at the back, so make sure you bring a dressing gown and slippers for the walk!

First stop is the anaesthetic room, which is a small room adjoining the operating theatre. You will catch glimpses of medical equipment, monitors, and tables obviously. But again, don’t let it panic you. You have already been sitting waiting for longer than you will be asleep. In other words, you will be back in your bed waking up before you know it!

At this point I spoke to two anaesthetists who made general conversation and made me feel comfortable as I lay down on a hospital bed. You will have to undo your gown so that you are ‘on show at the back’, and then lay down on the bed. At this point, there is nothing else you have to do. Just let the staff do their job.

The anaesthetist kept talking to me to keep me calm and relaxed – just about everyday stuff. Jobs, football etc. Whilst she was doing this, her colleague put a cannula into a vein in my hand. A cannula is a type of needle which ‘taps into’ a blood vessel in your body to allow medical staff to insert anaesthetic, drips or whatever they might need to, without having to give the patient lots of different injections. It is kind of a ‘universal’ injection. Thankfully, for the procedure you’re having, there is very little they need to put into your blood, so it won’t be in there for very long. The cannula hurts about as much as any injection does, but the anaesthetist will smear your hand with a numbing substance first, so it really isn’t that much of a bother.

At this point I must warn you that different surgeons or hospitals use slightly different techniques or substances to put you asleep. I will describe exactly how mine happened, but your experience may vary!

The anaesthetist applied one syringe into the cannula. I half expected to fall asleep at this point, but I didn’t. I was told that the first syringe was a painkilling drug, that would also make me quite drowsy. This is the best bit really folks. Once you have had that, you are still fully awake, and still fully aware of what is going on around you; but you are so relaxed and drowsy you just don’t care what happens next. It is a really nice feeling. Nothing at all to worry about. I think that they also put an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth at this point. I have trouble recalling it fully, but it certainly was nothing intrusive. I was ‘awake’ enough to ask what the first drug was, and for them to let me know when they were going to ‘put me asleep’ which they did, around 30 seconds later.

Checking into hospital

I can say without any hint of sarcasm that the surgery is a piece of cake. I went in to hospital at around 8AM having been asked to stay ‘nil by mouth’ (no eating or drinking) since Midnight; this is to ensure that you don’t vomit when you are under anaesthetic, so don’t break the rules! This really isn’t a problem at all. I probably go longer periods than this a few times a week. In hospital, I was visited by my nurse who went through a pre-op questionnaire. This mainly just asks about allergies etc. The nurse gave me a rather embarrassing hospital gown and paper underwear to change into. This is arguably the worst part of the whole experience, but it is necessary that you are dressed in ‘easy access’ clothing for when they take you down to theatre. At this point, I was also given a wristband with my name and date-of-birth on. I think it is at this point that some people start to feel most nerves, when they are in ‘patient-mode’. But don’t let it bother you. There is nothing to worry about, and it is over in no time.

The consultant visited next, and had a final consultation where I was given the opportunity to ask any last minute questions as he ran over how the procedure works. After this, it was a question of ‘sit tight’ and wait to be called.

Real Risks vs. Misconceptions

The doctor outlined some of the ‘risks’ associated with this procedure. None of the possible problems I discussed with my doctor were as severe as those I’ve seen mentioned online. Here is what I was told:

*The procedure can result in some reasonably prominent swelling and bruising on and around the penis. I gather that this can be painful and look pretty bad, but that ‘the penis is pretty good at reabsorbing this swelling’ and apparently does not usually last long or cause any lasting damage.

*Every 1 in 100 or so patients may need to revisit the surgeon to have blood vessels dealt with or sealed off if the patient is having trouble controlling the bleeding. Be aware, however, that it is perfectly normal for the wounds to continue to bleed until they have fully healed. This does not mean that anything is wrong!

*There is a risk of infection – like with any surgery – but I was advised to combat this with simple antibiotics from my GP if this occurred. Nothing serious!

The internet, as you may have seen, is full of horror stories about loss of sensation, permanent disfigurement etc. The internet is pretty sensationalist by nature. Usually it is only the gory/shocking things that people bother to write about. Unlike me. Mine went absolutely fine, and almost all others do too.

So anyway, the consultant took one look at it, saw how I was virtually unable to pull the skin back at all, and set a date for surgery about 3-4 weeks later.

Finally getting it done...

To cut a very long story short, I am now 30 years old and I have finally had it done. As you can probably see, I was more sceptical and worried about this procedure than I guess the majority of people are. But the truth is, there is nothing whatsoever to worry about. What I will say, however, is that people seem to be very ‘vague’ about the whole thing. I have heard massively differing information from different sources in terms of surgery time, recovery time, time until you can function normally etc. I simply want to document my own experiences for you, so that you can see how it worked out for me. I am sure everyone is different, but at least you can use this as a rough idea!

This time I got my operation done at a private hospital (couldn’t put up with the idea of waiting again – and my wife has a policy!), but this does not mean anything is different in terms of how it works. It just means that I had a guaranteed time slot, and that I got a free bacon sandwich when I came around from the anaesthetic. I went for two appointments leading up to the surgery. One was to meet my consultant to discuss the problem and what he would have to do. The other was to see a nurse to do a pre-op health check which involved taking a urine sample, blood pressure, nose and groin swabs (to check for MRSA) and a general questionnaire. Nothing painful – or too embarrassing!

In the meeting with my consultant, he gave me various pieces of information.

Firstly, if you are reading this ‘pre’ surgery, be aware that there are alternative methods available to you if your condition is less severe. In some cases, the condition can be helped and controlled through ‘exercise’ and steroid cream. Partial circumcisions, I believe, are also an option. Make sure you discuss these possibilities with your doctor so that you know you have made the right decision. There is no turning back once you have had a circumcision! However, this is exactly what I had.

Why I had the procedure in the first place

Firstly, let me start off by explaining why I got a circumcision. I had read many accounts online before of peoples’ personal experiences and felt really strange, as they really seemed to know what they were doing and didn’t seem freaked out to the extent that I was. I suffered from a condition called Phimosis, which is quite common. Phimosis is an abnormality in the foreskin (the skin which covers the head of your penis), which results in difficulty in pulling the foreskin back over the glans (head) to reveal it. The ability to do this is essential both for hygiene reasons, and for those of sexual pleasure. Sometimes phimosis is so severe that you can’t actually retract the foreskin at all, meaning that various activities, such as sex are, very difficult or impossible.

My phimosis was pretty bad, so I sympathise with anybody who reads this and has the condition. The strange thing was that I didn’t even know there was anything ‘wrong’ with me until I was about 16. Guys don’t tend to talk about things like this the same way women do. It was only when I went to the Doctor for an unrelated thing that he told me I was supposed to be able to pull the skin back. Well that was news to me! He referred me to a specialist to have a circumcision right away.

If only it had turned out that way. The letter from the hospital never arrived, and as I was kind of ‘used to it’, I just put it off thinking I could get it done whenever I wanted. I met a girl shortly after and somehow (don’t ask me how) I managed to explain the condition to her, and we ‘got around it’. She never put pressure on me to get it done and left it totally up to me when I decided to follow it up. The next time I visited a doctor regarding my foreskin, I was 25 years old. Even this is not the end of the story.

I was referred to a local consultant who booked me in for a surgery day at my local hospital. I arrived at around 7am, and was given a pre-op examination and told to ‘wait my turn’. Apparently there were around 5 other males having procedures that day, and the ‘running order’ was not divulged to us. Well guess what? I was last on the list. This meant that when one guy needed an additional amount of time in his slot, I got bumped off the rota. I was told at about 6pm that I wouldn’t be having my surgery today after all, and would need to rearrange for another time!

At this time in my life, I was not going through the best of times in terms of nerves and worry. Having to sit in a hospital waiting room for 11 hours waiting to be operated on had taken it out of me already. Being told that I was not even going to have the procedure done was something that massively discouraged me. So I went home and did not contact the hospital again.