A normal, healthy man will have 15 - 20 minutes of spontaneous erections every night while he is asleep. This is his bodies way of keeping the penile erectile tissues (spongiform bodies) healthy and usable.
After surgery, the nerves have been abused at best and completely removed at worst. It is then up to the man to make sure he has 15 - 20 minutes of erections every 24 hours. This is to insure that there is no buildup of scar tissue in the spongiform bodies within the penis. Those are the parts that swell up with blood to give you an erection.
If you do not have normal erections after surgery or radiation treatments, you will need to use the penis pump to generate them. The recommendation is about
15 minutes a day every day, pump one up, hold for a minute, then deflate and start over. This is an exercise to retain flexibility and prevent scar tissue formation.
We are often given a script
for daily Cialis as well to keep the blood vessels
open and the penile blood supply robust as that can attenuate after surgery, associated nerve damage and the lack of testosterone created by Leuprolide chemo. It is also recommended that the penis be massaged to increase blood flow to the area.
This all revolves around that old saw "use it or lose it". If you have no libido at all you have very little natural proclivity to do this stuff, but you can preserve your natural functional capacity even if it is just another scheduled exercise like push-ups.
4 years + after surgery and I still spend 20 minutes every morning with the pump while I check my email. Since I have no erectile nerves any more, this insures that I can indeed pump up an erection when I want one and retain it with an EZ Ring.
