Through the advancement of medical surgery, medical glue and steri-strips were used to close the incisions, with the narrow steri-strips replacing any gauze normally used to protect the incision site. The steri-strips loosen and glue residue is washed away wirth daily showers over about two weeks. There is barely visible any scar at the incision site.
I too awoke from the general anesthetic as if I had taken a short nap, and after an hour I was on my way to the drug and grocery store on the way home.
For swelling and tenderness, I used prescribed pain medication for a week, and ice compress for the first two days, followed by alternate cold and heat compresses for a week.
A previous vasectomy left more scar tissue on my scrotum mid-line, than any barely visible scar on my abdomen from the testicle removal using the inguinal route method.
Woggler58 (imported) wrote: Mon Nov 06, 2017 1:18 pm Well, most of us who have been surgically castrated via scrotal incision had both testicles removed in the same procedure and thus won't be having it done a second time with the other incision technique, to enable having personal experience with the incision location differences.
Since my castration was medically necessary to eliminate virtually all testosterone to stall prostate cancer recurrence, I cannot be on TRT and so I have no sex interest at all anymore, meaning esthetics of my empty, shrunken-up scrotum don't matter post-op to non-existent sex partners or to myself either. But I can share what I did experience, as to surgical technique and my recovery.
My bilateral orchi was performed by my regular urologist in his healthcare org's outpatient OR, with an anesthesiologist and three non-MD assistants attending, fully Medicare-covered, less than 2 miles from my home. My urologist has surgical days twice a month yet this was his first-ever orchiectomy so he took his time. He'd explained earlier that he would use a single midline incision, which is consistent with Johns Hopkins' Prostate Cancer, etc., White Paper and clearly is mainstream. I'd hoped to be awake and lucid during the procedure, with local anesthetic, but their preferred general anesthetic administered via my face mask had me out cold for the 75-minute operation.
I popped awake back in recovery, fully alert like I'd had a 40-min nap at home, in no pain at all. My MD came in and explained he'd given me some local anesthetic in my groin and scrotum to tide me over until I filled my Rx painkiller script on the way home and it could begin working. I was newly wearing a cheap jock strap which held a big wad of gauze against my flattened out yet somewhat swollen scrotum. I got to my feet, dressed myself in street clothes, and was released to my duty driver (my former long-term girlfriend, whom I recruited so she could be the rare ex-GF who got to drive her ex-BF to the hospital to be castrated, an 'honor' she appreciates and still regales her friends with, including her worried new BF!)
I walked into the drugstore with her to get the medicine, the grocery store similarly, then to my home. The local soon wore off yet my scrotum remained painless except for mere awareness that there was a sutured incision. Gradually, both sides of my groin at and above my abdominal wall became touchy and sore, the effect spreading in a crosswise band above the root of my penis. That effect peaked in a day and receded over the next three days to negligible. All physical positions around home were pain-minimal except for bending way over forward as for putting socks on. I never did take any pain medication, not even aspirin.
I assumed the groin pain was caused by each spermatic cord having to be pulled many inches out through my abdominal wall so my surgeon had enough exposed length of it outside my scrotum to tie it off and sever its end with its attached testicle and its epididymis. In later conversation with a different MD who had been a general surgeon who did lots of this kind of surgery, he confirmed that it was this pull on my cords inside my abdomen that was so noticeable, also that modern general anesthetic like I had is marvelous, fast-acting and fast-clearing, way more so than spinals that I had experienced years earlier.
There was only light bruising of my scrotum sides and perineum, showing up the next day and lasting for several more. Swollen cut cord ends -- and scrotum interior sacs, I guess -- initially kept my scrotum nearly normal-sized but that receded over the next several weeks. Since six months post-op I can't feel even the largest of the two cord ends within my slack-walled, empty and shrunken-up scrotum.
My scrotum never gave me any pain problem or bleeding complications, and I dispensed with the gauze after the third day. According to a 10-page written report my urologist wrote and gave me a copy of, there were three lines of sutures along the 1-3/4-inch long incision, two of which were inside and tied together inner sac incisions. All eventually dissolved. My urologist-surgeon at one week had a look at his handiwork but never again asked to see, and nobody else but me has seen it in the 15 months since then--and I've lost all interest in it by now. My never very dangly scrotum isn't dangly at all anymore and I have no issues with it. I used to keep my genitals routinely shaved and did a careful re-touch pre-op, but lack of testosterone since then has caused loss of nearly all body hair shoulders-down, such that my pubes are thin and very slow-growing now.
I can't imagine how two side incisions would meaningfully alter the outcome I had, compared to my single midline incision plus interior ones.
