Progress, An Injury, And A Hallelujah

So progress.

Managed to use the X30 WITH the comfort insert and with only a tiny little air bubble. Might not sound like much, but it’s a huge step forward to me - I thought I’d wasted money on a useless product. Thanks to Thoughtful Gold for the tip to lock the valve.

So the process is as follows - fill the Bathmate up at the shower. Insert penis inside. Compress gently for the first pump standing up, and then flick the valve closed before allowing the gaiter to push back - this was where the air was leaking in earlier, since the comfort ring is too hard to form a proper seal while standing. This maintains some vacuum and enough of a seal to allow me to walk the few feet over to the throne where I do my sets.

Once I’m sitting down and the valve is pointing above horizontal, flick it open and then pump up to maximum pressure (I still need to use the Vacu-Vin mod to get to the vacuum level I’m comfortable with). And then rinse and repeat. I have to say that now that I’ve got it working, the comfort insert takes away the gaiter bite issue completely.

The tiny air bubble can’t be defeated. I never could but maybe once with the Penomet. It just is part of how we imperfectly line the cylinder up with the penis.

If my tips helped then I’m quite glad you found my sale thread to ask the question.

They did, TG, they did.

In fact the morning session went so well I’m tempted to do a second one tonight instead of manual stretching like usual.

Damn it, blood in the tube again yesterday, and a decent amount of it too.

I’m taking the week off from pumping, and will be focusing on manual stretching and jelqs only after Monday.

I don’t think this was because of over pumping in terms of pressure, but for either one or both of the following two reasons:

A) I’ve drifted back into pumping every day. I do need to consciously ensure to take at least a couple of rest days a week.

B) I was wrapping my glans and the upper shaft with self adhesive tape to avoid a donut, and the tape itself is a little rough and was pulling on the tip of my urethra. On one out of three days I tried it, it did make a significant difference to the amount of edema post session, but the rough texture and stiffness wasn’t worth it. I’m going to try and make a silicone sleeve for the head during this week off and see if that works better.

So coming back from my week off and first minute in the tube there was blood again. Quite a bit of it too. Also this hit before I’d even pumped up past 160, which is a couple of centimeters short of my max (on the Hercules I could go past 190 but I haven’t been able to go past 180 on the X30 without something going wrong).

Funny though, there’s literally zero pain, just a weird tingling sensation at the tip of my urethra.

Whatever it is, I’m not going to push it. As happy as I’ve been with pumping I’m taking an indefinite break from it. When I do think I can get back to it, I’m going to try and see if I can either patch up my old Hercules or get a new one. Or I’ll try without the comfort insert on the X30 - it feels like its grabbing onto the skin and overstretching the tip end, especially around the frenulum. I hope that’s what it is, because pumping has been good to me and I’d hate to give it up for good.

But right now it’s several days rest for me and then only manual stretching and jelquing for a while. I hate the thought of potentially losing some of my gains from the downtime but this is a marathon and not a sprint.

In the meanwhile, does anyone have any ideas about fixing a small rip in the rubber gaiter?

Holy cow man, knock off the PE and see a doctor.

I will if it doesn’t heal. And I’m taking a solid several days off to let it.