Coming up on 7 weeks post op and wanted to write down my thoughts on the process and working with his office before things got too fuzzy. If you have any questions at all feel free to ask below.

Why I choose Dr. Ramineni: While researching doctors there were several important factors that effected my decision.

Type of procedure offered : I knew I wanted standard penile inversion and that is what he offered

Location : A major concern for me was location, this being a major surgery with months of follow up visits, I did not want to have to travel very far. This quickly narrowed down my search to east coast doctors. In addition I happened to live within a short driving distance to his office which greatly influenced my decision.

Reviews/results : It was hard to find anything negative about Dr. Ramineni, while not as popular as some other surgeons, what was out there on Reddit and other review sites was overwhelmingly positive. The results, many of which you can view on his website, look fantastic.

Insurance : His office is in network, making insurance coverage a breeze.

Experience/Reputation : During my consultation I asked him about his experience and complication rates. His office said has performed hundreds of surgeries with extremely rare occurrence of major compilations. More importantly Whitman-Walker one of the top LGBT clinics in the country has a good relationship with him and said patients have been happy with his work.

With those considerations in mind, I chose his office and scheduled my surgery.

Pros

• No BMI restrictions, his attitude is it’s a medically necessary procedure and he is not a gatekeeper, honestly I really respected that.

• No hair removal necessary as hair is removed in surgery though can be provided if requested.

• Super easy to schedule, office will often get back to you within hours and surgery dates are plentiful. Multiple consultations were no issue.

• Dr. Ramineni is super responsive, emailed questions get answered by him personally and very quickly, I have worked with a few doctors at this point and this is pretty rare.

• Easy to work with insurance, lots of experience navigating the process and handling it all for you.

Cons You know, when I first met him I thought to myself “this dude grew up in NY” and sure enough when I looked him up that turned out to exactly be the case. The flip side to how quickly this office will respond or schedule you is accepting that you are 100% on a conveyor belt. If you don’t have questions or comments office visits will last just a few minutes, nothing is explained and nor expanded on unless you speak up. Now, he does not rush you, and answers all your questions, but if you don’t speak up he’s just going to assume everything is fine and move on. I find preparing a list of notes and questions beforehand hand was a big help, and during follow up visits I had to be clear and assertive in my concerns less risk them getting brushed off.

Hospital stay : Overall I would say it was pretty smooth, but even so this is not a fun few days. The day of is no big deal, you show up early, they usher you into pre op, the surgery team introduces themselves and answer last second questions, you take some drugs and then you wake up later all done. I had the epidural so pain was not too bad, overall I would say day 1 was the easiest.

I remained in the hospital for 3 additional days, with the catheter, IV and epidural it was really hard to move around, again pain was manageable unless you had to move, so going to the bathroom was the absolute worst and quite an ordeal both because of all the stuff you had to drag with you, and how much it hurt to walk & sit. That being said just laying down was fine and was basically all I did.

Recovery : The ride home was pretty painful, and the first weekend was absolute misery. I was completely dependent on my wife who was kindly taking care of me; the first weekend combined all the pain and misery of the hospital stay without any of the pain meds or nurses.

Once the packing came out things got easier, and basically it was all easier from there. There were a few days were the pain suddenly got very intense again and there was a lot of discharge, I talked to the Dr. about it, figured it was an infection and got antibiotics. That cleared it up very quickly.

I was back working but remote after 2 weeks, back in the office full time after 5 weeks.

Results: Honestly I think it looks pretty great, hard to say for sure as everything is still healing, and there is a good bit of granulation tissue, but I am very happy. Depth is about 6 inches no issues with dilation at all. Some areas are still numb but sensation seems good to very good.