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We had to suspend our Trimix dose testing due to a bruise caused by my injection on Monday. I must have hit a vein. The bruise is fading. With any luck, we can try again tonight (I’m writing this post on Thursday) or tomorrow night. I shouldn’t be surprised that the required dose is large. My doctor warned me that it might be. I did some more research and called the compounding pharmacy to find out if there were options if the dose needed was high.

If I need .50 ml per dose, I would get ten erections per $133 vial. That’s not a crazy price when I compare it to the copay I would have for 18 erections of Edex ($200 every 90 days). The pharmacist said that there are stronger Trimix formulas. The next one up is about twice as strong as what I have now. She said that they don’t usually recommend it until the weaker dosage is at least .80 ml. My thought is that if I go above .50 ml (ten erections/vial), I want the stronger stuff. My goal is to get at least 15 erections out of a vial.

This process feels weird to me. It shouldn’t. When Viagra and Cialis were under patent protection, my insurance covered a very limited number of pills per month. I think it was five or six. My current insurance doesn’t cover those drugs at all. At the time, I could get it up with some reliability without drugs. It’s only recently that I can’t get hard on my own or with the boner pills.

I’ve wondered if this isn’t nature’s way of telling me that it’s time to give up on sex. It would make life easier for Mrs. Lion if I did. Well, I don’t want to. I think I could without falling into depression, but I’m not ready yet. Think of it, a sex blogger who resigned from having sex. Yeesh!

I could take up knitting or needlepoint instead. Nah! Maybe I could find some geezers for a bridge game. Talk about depressing options! I am about to take an amateur radio license test. I can chat with other impotent men about technical subjects on the radio. Actually, my spidey sense tells me to get the license as a way to help protect us in case of a natural disaster. If nothing else, it gives me a geeky way to learn more about technology.

I can’t think of any menu choice to replace sex. That means I’ll have to keep trying to find ways to keep it available to me.

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to wonder if all this effort for an erection is worthwhile. On Monday night, I tried with .3o ml of Trimix. I got a bit hard but bendy. This wasn’t what I wanted. Yes, I was warned that I would probably need a high dose of the stuff, but I optimistically figured I wouldn’t need more than .25 ml. Now that I know .30 ml is still too little, I have to face the chance that I may need a .50 ml dose. That makes boners pretty expensive. If I need that much, each erection will cost $13. I will get ten out of a 5 ml vial. The vial is good for ninety days. So, if I want to make the stuff last, I’ll be able to get hard every ten days.

Actually, ten days is a reasonable spacing for my orgasms. I’m pretty used to waiting that long. The thing is that I’m not used to having any teasing or other fun during the ten-day wait. I was hoping for two activities a week. That would require about one vial a month. I suppose that isn’t an insane cost. I just wanted to keep costs at about $2oo for a ninety-day supply. Maybe once I optimize my dose, the doctor can find me a different strength or blend that will let me use a smaller dose.

Aside from the evolving economic issue, I’m still not injecting as well as I should. Monday’s injection produced a rather large bruise on my penis (See bruise here). This is probably due to me hitting a vein that wasn’t visible on the surface. It’s not a big deal, just an annoyance. I’m holding off on my next try until the bruise gets better. I did this shot without the Inject-Ease. I was able to position the needle more accurately. The shot was painless and easy to do.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea that erections cost money. Like most guys, erections were always free, and the biggest problem was getting too many of them at times that could be embarrassing. Now, we have to decide if it’s worth $13 for me to get hard. Sheesh! I hate this idea. It certainly puts pressure on both of us every time I use the Trimix.

Before, when I took generic Viagra or Cialis, it only cost a few cents per pill. A 20mg Cialis tablet set me up for erections for over thirty hours.  A bottle of 90 tablets cost less than $40. It was no big deal if Mrs. Lion was tired or not in the mood. Now, we both have to be prepared to do something big each time I inject the drug. It’s too expensive to waste on a “I have a headache dear” evening. This need for advance commitment takes a lot of the fun out of things.

Mrs. Lion is good at finding ways to make things work. Perhaps she should decide when I get a shot and what will happen when I do. Maybe there’s a way to turn this rather depressing process into a fun activity. I hope there is. Right now, I’m feeling pretty bad about it.

I am having problems with my Trimix injections. On Sunday, I set up a .3 ml dose and loaded my Inject-Ease with the syringe. I thought I hit the right area of my penis. There was no pain, bleeding, or bruise. However, there was also no erection, not even a trace of one. What the hell? I didn’t feel any effect at all.

There are only a couple of reasons this could have happened. One is that the Trimix isn’t working. That’s probably not the case. The vial has been refrigerated since we got it. Also, two of the three ingredients are not sensitive to temperature. The second possibility is that I didn’t get the drug in the right place. The image (Right) shows the correct position for the needle. The drug has to get into the spongy erectile tissue. It seems hard to miss, but I did.

I don’t know exactly what happened. I didn’t hit a nerve or the urethra, so I probably just sent the drug under the skin on top of my penis. The problem I’m having with the Inject-Ease is that I’m finding it difficult to control the device at the same time I have it in the right position. I’ll try again today.  Since I had no reaction, I’m not counting Sunday as one of the three times-a-week limits for the drug.

My plan for tonight (Monday) is to inject without the Inject-Ease. I will also ask Mrs. Lion to help me make sure I’m in the right spot. For the record, the injections have all been painless. The needle is very thin, and the shaft of the penis has few nerve endings. I can understand why some men find this process too intimidating. I’m not crazy about it. I just want to get hard, and doing the injection is my only option. Wish me luck!

We’re both frustrated by the time it’s taking to get the right dose of Trimix. The problem isn’t that it won’t work. It’s that there is a risk it will work too well. The drug will produce solid erections in almost every man. It clearly works for me, just not well enough yet.

The risk is that if I inject too much, I will stay hard for more than four hours. That’s called priapism and can result in permanent damage to the penis. An emergency room visit is required if I don’t get soft within four hours. So, I have to increase the dose slowly to avoid the issue. On Saturday, I injected .25 ml of Trimix. I was hoping that would be the effective dose. it wasn’t. I had a very bendable partial woody. Mrs. Lion tried to arouse me without much success.

I think the problem with that was my disappointment with the drug. It’s supposed to produce a useful (capable of penetration) erection without outside help. From my research, that means I would be at about eighty percent of my maximum size. My research indicates that a dose of at least .25 ml is required. My urologist said that I might need a larger dose. My Sunday test will be with .30 ml.

Mrs. Lion commented that if the dose is high, the drug may become too expensive. We paid $133 for 5 ml of Trimix. For comparison, my insurance copay would be $200 for 18 doses of Edex. Edex is a single-ingredient drug that is generally considered inferior to Trimix.

Let’s do the math. If I need .30 ml per erection, I would get 16 erections per bottle, a cost of $8.31 per boner. The Edex costs $11 per boner. I can only buy the Edex every three months. If I need .4 ml of Trimix for a boner, I will get 12 boners per bottle at a cost of $11 each. That makes the cost equal to Edex. If I need .50 ml per dose, I get ten boners a bottle at a cost of $13.33 each.

There is more to this calculation than calculating cost per dose. The assumption is that I can use all of the Trimix before it expires. It has a thirty-day life in the refrigerator. So we have to keep in mind that Mrs. Lion will want me to shoot up at least that many times before the bottle has to be discarded. I’m pretty sure that she will want me to get it up at least once a week. So, thirteen erections in ninety days are reasonable. Even if we go to two bottles of Trimix in three months, our total cost is $266, which is only $66 more than my copay for Edex.

The odds are pretty good that I will need less than .50 ml per dose. If I turn out to need more, the doctor can change the mix in Trimix to be more potent. That shouldn’t make much change in cost to me. She can also prescribe Quadmix, which adds yet another boner-making ingredient. There are lots of options. The problem is that it takes more and more time to get that first perfect erection. I think that’s why so many men drop out before having success. I am certainly tired of all these failures. It’s no fun.

The partial erections that I’ve had so far feel…interesting. When I’m standing, it feels like my penis is heavy. I’m sure this is due to the blood partially filling it. Since I’m not turned on, the partial erection doesn’t feel like it is “right.” It feels a little odd. It’s sort of like how it felt when I finished ejaculating and then stood up. It’s not a bad feeling, just odd.

Well, today (Sunday), I’ll inject .30 ml of Trimix. Maybe that will give me the boner we are both anxious to enjoy.