Warning: this posting may squick some.

Costentin Cornomorus scripsit:

> I know. [Viagra] doesn't do anything all by itself
> anyway - it does require some desire on the part
> of the man.

Even allowing for that, I think the success rate is only about 50%.

> Tell me about it! Delicate and complicated pieces
> of machinery, difficult to implant, with very
> risky surgery (due especially to the nerves in
> the region of where the thing goes in) and a
> difficult recovery process.

I spent most of a a year sitting on a pillow.  And that was what
my surgeon called a smooth and uncomplicated recovery.  I also spent
several weeks screaming in pain -- about 75% of which was essentially blue
balls, a problem I'd never had before!  I wish my surgeon had warned me,
and I could have missed a lot of pain.  (He did give me painkillers,
but I couldn't deal with the nausea.)

> irreversible - you _can't_ decide later that you
> want them out.

True.  And they may need replacement down the road.

> > but certainly not an unmixed curse.
>
> Having helped put one in a man, I think I can
> definitely say that (personally) I could do
> without the sex. [At this point, there's almost
> no operation I would _willingly_ undergo.]

Several years down the road, I think it was marginally worth it, all
things considered.  YMMV.

--
John Cowan  [log in to unmask]  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
I must confess that I have very little notion of what [s. 4 of the British
Trade Marks Act, 1938] is intended to convey, and particularly the sentence
of 253 words, as I make them, which constitutes sub-section 1.  I doubt if
the entire statute book could be successfully searched for a sentence of
equal length which is of more fuliginous obscurity. --MacKinnon LJ, 1940