talk to me about hypospadius, please.

[bigreddog]

Have name-changed on the grounds that it's DS's penis, not mine, and I'm pretty easy to identify in RL.

DS is 2. We had our latest meeting with the urologist last week. He is now recommending a full plastic surgery cosmetic reconstruction as well as re-plumbing, rather than just the basic re-plumbing job. A little bit of browsing on the web makes me think that both procedures, although minor, will be pretty unpleasant. Both require general anaesthetic, catheter for a week after, and in addition the plastic surgery option may involve a skin graft.

Has anyone out there had a DS who's had this surgery? How did you decide on which procedure to go for, and how was the post-op recovery? (I'm worried about how much pain DS will go through, and how to keep a child of his age - about 3 I think when they plan to operate - from pulling the catherter out).

Any advice very gratefully received.

[bigreddog]

bump?

[morethanyoubargainfor]

my Ds 7 has just had his (hopefully) last opfor this.

His first one was at 3 months old and he has now had 12 surgeries. It doesn't get any easier and in fact i found my ds easier to deal with when he was younger. The hospital we are under is great and couldn't fault it. They were very good at managing his pain etc, It was the other drugs we had problems peersueding ds to take! he was catherised and he was very protective of his bag, we brought him a special bag to carry it around in so nobody would know.

We didn't have an option as to what surgery he had as he was so severe, they grew skin on him to use for the reconstruction. I found the whole process amazing but that is just me.

My ds didn't really feel any pain and he just accepted that he was limited an what he could do although he tried on many occassions to jump out of bed and run for it . You just have to be calm and relaxed about it all and do your best, i would reccommend buying a portable dvd player and lots of new DVD's that you DS would like but have never seen, also so new toys, anything he can do in bed or sat at a table that will keep him still but entertained.

They are usually up and about in a couple of days, only once did my ds have to be completely non weight bearing for 8 days, he throughly made the most of that and his servant parents! You have to remeber children are more resiliant than us adults give them credit for.

Good luck and i hope everything goes ok for your DS.

[bigreddog]

Thanks,Morethan, that's good to know that the pain can be so well managed. I'm sorry to hear that the repair process has been so protracted for your DS - sounds like he's a very brave little boy. We're lucky, I think, in that all along the doctors have stressed that DS's case was relatively mild - which is perhaps why I was a bit taken aback last week to hear that they were thinking of plastic surgery.

The dvd and toys idea sounds really great - he'll be about 3 before they operate, so I think will be old enough to have the process explained a bit better (though he was very funny last Friday afternoon - he suddenly said, rather thoughtfully, "Mr X mend willy"), and do things like watch DVDs, play with jigsaws and so on rather than run around constantly.

I hope your DS's op does turn out to be the last one. Thanks again.