As good as it gets (with pics)
I thought it was time I did an update with pictures. This is more or less what I have been looking like now for some time now. I think it's safe to say that what I have now is as good as it's going to get.
Considering what I looked like when I started, I don't think it's bad going. Here's a list of all the issues I no longer have:
But of course, it's not perfect. I've had to accept a few slight issues:
I'm still very happy with what I have achieved. When I first realised I had BXO (and I know that sounds strange for something that progressively develops) and I took to the Internet to seek a cure, there was a point where I was thinking I would have to accept my original state for the rest of my life. But I now have a normal sex life, and I feel normal again.
Here's my current state, which as I mentioned earlier, I believe is as good as it's going to get.
Considering what I looked like when I started, I don't think it's bad going. Here's a list of all the issues I no longer have:
- Fully normal sexual function, without risk of injury
- Skin feels normal and supple to the touch, and has regained sensitivity
- Skin looks normal by and large, particularly on top
- No partner has ever commented that anything looks abnormal
- I feel 'normal' again
But of course, it's not perfect. I've had to accept a few slight issues:
- A very small amount of itching sometimes occurs after sexual activity
- There are still some small areas of white skin
- I have to maintain dryness. I don't know this for a fact, but due to the slow progression of this disease, it's not something that is conducive to experimentation. If I stopped being paranoid and drying myself all over, it probably wouldn't make any difference for a few months, but once I noticed a difference, it would probably take a similar length of time to undo that damage (if in fact it happened at all).
I'm still very happy with what I have achieved. When I first realised I had BXO (and I know that sounds strange for something that progressively develops) and I took to the Internet to seek a cure, there was a point where I was thinking I would have to accept my original state for the rest of my life. But I now have a normal sex life, and I feel normal again.
Here's my current state, which as I mentioned earlier, I believe is as good as it's going to get.
Nice post. I'm glad it's going so well, congratulations, keep us informed, thank you !!!
ReplyDeleteHey there, thanks for your blog and the work youre putting into it. I just recently got diagnosed with bxo and I was wondering if there is some sort of compressed summary of some sort. Rather than reading through all the pages, is there a schedule you would recommend with certain treatments? I am new to this so I think for a lot of people like me it might be super helpful to have a summar or a dens 'what worked best' report if that makes sense. Thanks in advance!
ReplyDeleteSure thing. The quick and condensed summary of my journey is that pretty much every treatment I tried had more or less the same effect. The one thing that I'm absolutely convinced helped me heal is simply keeping the area dry. Use toilet paper after urination, and don't let a drop get anywhere. Dry all of your penis, and foreskin, not just the affected area. Do this consistently and within a couple of weeks you should start noticing peeling.
DeleteIn case you want to try something more, I found Tea Tree Oil, Manuka Honey, and 3% Hydrogen Peroxide were all positively useful in the early stages too.
How bad is your case?
Hello.. do you have any before pictures.
ReplyDeleteI have been diagnosed with bxo in September and i gave mainly white pigmentation under foreskin 3 small white pigment patches on gland and a small scar patch on foreskin..
I been using tto and emuoil.. seems to be helping tge scarring but it apoears tge white is spreading alittle around the foreskin tip area.
I wrote this before i scrolled back.. haha.. i see ur 1st stages and wow what a remarkable difference.. do u have an email i can send some pics to to show you my current state of my bxo
DeleteI do, but if I write it here, it becomes identifiable by spam bots and the like. Why not upload your pics to picpaste.com and share the url on here?
Deletewhere is your frenulum?
ReplyDeleteIt went when I was circumcised as an infant.
DeleteHuh? looks like you have foreskin
DeleteYup. I'm restored. I mentioned that in an early post, I believe.
Deletehi twn, Thank you very much for this blog and all the information that you have put here! I am very much interested, now that you have reached the "as good as it gets" stage, do you have a maintenance routine?
ReplyDeleteHey, thanks for your comment.
DeleteNo, I don't have any maintenance routine, other than just keeping the area dry after urination. If possible, I use stalls rather than urinals, simply because they provide toilet paper I can use afterward. If I'm forced to use a urinal, I'll try and dry any damp spots on the inside of my underwear.
And when did you stop the treatments, and just decided to keep it dry? Did the skin stop peeling? Did it stop beeing glassy? Now that you care about the skin beeing dry does it ocasionally peel?
DeleteTom
I forgot to white my name underneath the previous posts here! All the recent comments here are mine! Thnx once again for your blog and your help! It's not only a great source of knowledge, but a great psychological help!
DeleteTom
thank you very much for your answer! And what about sweat? Do you exercise? I am doing quite a lot of cycling, and i am wondering how to prevent dampnes in the genitals during workouts. In march I am going on a trip where I will be riding a bike for something like 10 hours a day for 11 days straight. Do you maybe have any ideas how to minimize the dampnes in the genital area during long sport activities?
ReplyDeletehi twn, i came up with an idea regarding keeping the urine of the glans during long physical activities. Do you think that a barier cream like vaseline would be a good option? Actually I don't know if the glans can be irritated by the sweat from a different part of the body, or if the glans actually sweats...
ReplyDeleteI'll answer all your questions together.
ReplyDeleteI stopped most treatments after about 18 months, possibly less. I found I was having much less peeling, and the texture overall returned much closer to the original. There were still patches of white skin, but over time this has thinned out and returned more or less to the original texture and colour. I don't really see any peeling these days.
I do exercise (nowhere near as much as I used to). I found sweat made me a litle itchy at times, but at that stage in my recovery, so did stress, so it may have been to do with the stress response rather than the sweat itself.
I wouldn't worry about sweat accumulating on you. I say that for a couple of reasons. First, I don't think sweat has the same effect as urine does. Studies have shown urine specifically contributes to BXO, but sweat would be another thing altogether. Secondly, even if you had urine on you for a few hours, I doubt anything bad would happen. I'd just make sure you had a good shower after you were finished. If really really concerned, you could always wrap a piece of toilet paper around your glans then cover it with the skin. Although comfort may be an issue, and if you sweat too much, you'd only end up saturating it anyway.
Re vaseline... that's a really good question. I wondered the same thing. It's oil-based, which means it repels water. So a decent coating of vaseline would repel fluids like urine. However.... remember that sweat comes FROM the skin, so if the penis sweats (I'm sure the glans doesn't, but I suspect the foreskin may) then all you'll be doing is trapping the sweat between the skin and the vaseline.
Thank you very much for the answers! I think that during the trip I am just going to try to clean the genitals with some wet whipes as often as possible and dry them thoroughly :)
DeleteTom
Great idea! And a thought I just had is that you'll be urinating over that time, so will have the chance to clean yourself discreetly. Also, in all seriousness, sweat on your penis is only one of the things you need to be concerned about. I'd also make sure you wipe around your scrotum and skin crevaces. It's good to try and keep that from spending too long warm and sweaty, because you can get really bad fungal infections. I speak from experience there.
DeleteSo you don't even need to make an excuse for why you're carrying wet wipes into the toilet! Just say you don't want to get jock itch and want to stay clean - while you're in, clean your penis also.
Hi again! :) You're right, during breaks i will just take care of the hygene, and it should be allright!
ReplyDeleteApart from the haolidays subject I would like to ask you about some fundamentals regarding bxo. First thing is keeping it dry. I started being retracted all the time, and I pretty much enjoy it, no problems with that! but I still sweat (Im not super sweaty, but the genitals are not 100% dry), and it's winter on my side of the globe right now ;). I am wondering how will I be able to keep it dry during summer... Are you doing everything you can to keep the are 100% dry, or it's rather avoiding contact with urine, and keeping the hygene? I also dribble for quite a long time after urination. the last drop pour out even 4 minutes after urination. Because I am retracted the drop disappears in my underwear, but I wonder weather that is ok, or I should spend these additional 4 minutes in the toilet to make sure that i dried everything with toilet paper? What is your experience?
If you've noticed yourself dribbling after urination, then that's probably where your BXO has come from. Research has found that urine is a potential cause of BXO in men. It wasn't until I was looking back that I realised my BXO had started about the same time I noticed myself dribbling.
DeleteIn other words, I would only be concerned about urine, and not worry about sweat. I don't dry myself obsessively during the day. I'm only worried about urine.
I occasionally find I get a 'surge' of urine come out after I'm done. So I tend to hang around a bit after I'm done, just to make sure that won't happen. The thing is, if you're wiping yourself dry after the main urination has happened, then you've done 96% of the drying. So if you still dribble a small amount after you've left the toilet, then it's not going to do anywhere near as much as it was before you started keeping anything dry.
To develop BXO takes a lot of time being covered in a lot of urine. A small amount of time with a small amount of urine won't do much harm, I don't think.
I was diagnosed about 1,5 months ago, and I thought that it's an early stage. But then I started using tea tree oil, and I was shocked to see peeling on my whole frenulum. Suddenly I realised that it had been constricted for years, and had a white color (which I, and even doctors considered normal, because it seemed a normal color for a piece of tight skin). In 10 days my frenulum got longer and softer, and also it turns out i had some part of inner foreskin connected with the glans by bxo. Now after 16 days of tea tree oil this will also be soon a thing of a past. But I was shocked that I probaby had BXO for something like 7 years at least. I am acctually thankful to the latest stresses that made the BXO visable on the new part of skin, so I could start treating it. I have BXO on my glans near the urethra which bothers me, but I honestly belive that keeping it as dry as possible is the right way. How much was your glans affected?
ReplyDeleteIt's still me - Tom :)
DeleteMy glans was fully covered in it. Like you, I didn't realise how badly affected I was until I started healing. I had thought the colour change was just normal.
DeleteThanks for all your answers! It makes my journey so much easier mentally.
DeleteGreat to see you’ve had such progress. Do you know of any of the treatments will help with the phimotic ring? I was circumcised a while back when I was diagnosed. Unfortunately those hard white lumps have come back on the shaft around the circumcision scar and it's forming a ring again. I’d love to be able to get rid of that before it gets worse. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI know that circumcision reportedly doesn't resolve this condition in a small percentage of men. You may be among this group. Do you know for certain it's bxo and not something else? If you are in doubt it might pay to get it confirmed by a doctor.
DeleteIf it is bxo, I would try any of the treatments mentioned here, starting with Manuka Honey. Because you have no foreskin you will probably need to cover yourself in cling wrap after applying, in order to hold it in place.
It looks like it did when I got it the first time round. I have an appointment with a dermatologist in a couple weeks so they can confirm hopefully.
DeleteI don’t think I got a full circumcision, plus I’m a bit overweight so it means the glans are somewhat covered most of the time. Only time the glans are fully exposed is when I’m lying on my back. So I’ll try keeping my glans completely uncovered for a bit and see what happens. How do you keep your foreskin retracted?
I understand. You haven't said what things you have tried already. What have you done to keep yourself dry already? How strict are you about ensuring you always dry yourself thoroughly after urination?
DeleteAt one stage I tried keeping my foreskin retracted, but I never managed to keep it there. In the end I found it wasn't necessary if I simply made frequently trips to the toilet (every couple of hours) to dry myself off.
I’ve used a steroid, but I don’t really think that works well for me. I’ve started on the tea tree oil. One thing on that; a lot of things I’ve seen online is that tea tree oil burns when applied neat. For me it doesn’t at all. Do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?
DeleteI’m trying to source some talc with zinc oxide and will use that for drying too. Would it not just rub off on your underwear though? I’ll ensure I’ll make frequent toilet trips too from now on.
Thanks a lot for all your help twn. You’re doing a great thing.
I found Clobetasol wasn't a 'wonder drug' by any stretch. The natural treatments I'm using these days (I'll be posting about that at some stage) are producing results easily as good as I got with Clobetasol, if not better.
DeleteNeat TTO is definitely too strong. I know I used it that way for a while, but it caused too many issues. It's much better when diluted in a carrier oil of some kind.
Talc comes off if the skin isn't covered in foreskin. But by the sounds, the area where you have the ring is covered, so you should be able to keep it in place for a few hours at least.
Hi There..firstly, the blog is giving me positive thoughts and courage that I will recover from BXO. I recently diagnosed with BXO, doctor did circumcision a week back, now I am seeing my whole glans skin is wrinkly and plastiky and ready to peel.
ReplyDeleteI have gone through your healing guide and have a doubt.How long will it take for healing ( like how many months)? Please suggest.I will follow your suggestiins and treatments from now..
Hi there. Having undergone a circumcision, you probably won't need to do much other than wait it out to heal. How long it takes to heal depends on the thickness of your BXO skin. I found the glans to be some of the slowest tissue there is when it came to healing. I would honestly prepare yourself for at least 12 months' healing time.
DeleteThanks my friend. I started seeing skin healing , the time just after circumcision, now it is very much better in healing, though I still have peeling skin but it is very less with compared past behavior. Thanks a lot for your reply.
DeleteIts been 1.6 years since my circumcision . I still have skin peeling on my glans. But I completely relieved from itchiness. Glans skin is still plasticky .. Just want to update my status here
DeleteHello, recently I have been diagnosed with BXO/ Lichen Schlerosus. 5 months ago I noticed blood blisters on my penis head after sex and this repeated several times until I went tot he doc who didn't know what it was
ReplyDeleteUrologist looks at it for 2 secs Say BXO circumcision is your only option. After seeing a naturopath and visiting this blog I believe I can fight this on my own and I truly believe urine is the key as you point out repeatedly. The big thing I am wondering about is diet, specifically high oxalate foods that increase the acidity of urine and thus make it easier to foster disease. Also how important do you find diet is overall in fighting this? Also there there a product called baby bum powder but sweet cheeks that contains arrowroot powder and is a good alternative alternative talcum powder.