Circumcision usually happens when a man is too young to remember, so when Dave was booked in for the surgery at 21, he was a little unnerved.
“That was pretty full on, to be honest. But I think there was a part of me that knew that would be the case,” he recalls.
Dave’s concerns began when felt some discomfort around his penis while on an overseas trip. One week later, he noticed a discharge. He spoke to his brother about the issue and, speaking frankly about his body for the first time, realised that things weren’t functioning as they should.
He saw a urologist when he came home and was diagnosed with phimosis, a medical condition in which the foreskin is too tight to be pulled back over the head or glans of the penis.
Phimosis makes the penis difficult to clean leading to inflammation of the glans and foreskin, difficulty urinating and discomfort or pain during sex and masturbation and even penile cancer.
Dave had always experienced some pain and discomfort, but until the conversation with his brother he thought it was normal. He suffered quietly, dwelling on ways to minimise it.
In some cases, phimosis can be treated by a combination of stretching exercises and creams that help elasticate the foreskin and eventually allow it to retract. But Dave’s urologist said this was not an option for him.
“I said my friend had a similar issue, and he had a cream and it was all resolved, and [the urologist] said no, no. You need to have surgery,” Dave remembers.
In an ideal world, men won’t need to suffer before they start to talk about their problems.
And so it happened. Dave was circumcised.
The first night after his operation, he woke up in “excruciating” pain.
“You usually get a couple of erections in the evening, and there’s no way to communicate to your brain that you’d really like to not get them, because it’s going to pull stitches.”
Blood was drawn as the stitches pulled, but the fact that they remained intact created an unnerving impression of normality. As he cleaned the blood from his sheets and his pants, and calmed himself enough to get back to bed, Dave had to face the fact that this would be a common occurrence through his recovery.
In the weeks that followed, the visibility of Dave’s struggles and their cause allowed him to talk about his body with friends and family with a newfound openness. That stood in contrast to how he felt growing up, where he now remembers holding concerns that he struggled to articulate.
“I think the issue comes down to that - potentially - male social or cultural aspect of, ‘I don’t want to talk about my d*ck. It works fine. I don’t want to acknowledge that it doesn’t.’”
Melbourne urological surgeon Dr Conrad Bishop says that this culture of silence is one of the biggest challenges in men’s health.
“One thing I’m keen on is to get guys to start having more conversations about these things, because it puts them in a better position to know when something is wrong,” he said.
He believes a stronger dialogue could have positive effects treating men’s health issues, including prostate cancer, penile cancer, erectile dysfunction, depression, and anxiety.
One thing I’m keen on is to get guys to start having more conversations about these things, because it puts them in a better position to know when something is wrong.
For Dave, a newly open dialogue has already helped him process an unexpected outcome of his circumcision - a loss of sensitivity in the penis - that has reduced the physical sensation of sex, and led to difficulty in reaching orgasm.
In turn, it has also caused him to focus more on the mental and emotional aspects of his sexuality, which can be both a help and a hindrance.
“I definitely think I’m far more careful about [sex], far more cautious about it, and really try to make sure that I like the person because that will have a big effect on the outcome,” he said.
“If I let myself doubt things or if I get anxious it can seriously affect the quality of it, or the duration, if it’s able to happen at all”.
This has led to a new form of anxiety when it comes to sex, but unlike his younger self, Dave is now open and willing to talk through this with his partners, while also talking and listening to friends and family about other physical and mental health problems.
“I feel like it’s also been good to the immediate people around me that I’ve had these conversations with, because it allows them to bring up things that they’re interested in or worried about too.”
In an ideal world, men won’t need to suffer before they start to talk about their problems. While these conversations may not spare Dave’s friends from circumcisions of their own, they may encourage them to discuss issues they are not able to confront alone.
