Break from the norm once again: this time it's a medical condition effecting the sea-monster. Maybe you heard of this, or phimosis?
If not: Phimosis is when the foreskin is tighter than it should be, making retraction quite difficult, and possibly painful. Resolving it is quite straightforward, with stretching exercises — and if subscribed, steroid cream to assist the process.
But what if one allows the foreskin to remain tightly retracted, and let hard-ons occur? Then there's risk of the condition's older brother: paraphimosis. This is when the skin is trapped under the head, and by extension blood. Trapped blood can eventually cause bloated swelling to form, ballooning part of the shaft under the head. The (flaccid) result is this:
http://www.tabletsmanual.com/img/wiki/paraphimosis_1.jpg
Gross. And it can potentially swell to much larger degrees. Luckily, mine is only by that much, pictured above. Saying this, when errection does occur, the is compressed into a ring, or 'mane' of sorts, around the head.
I've had paraphimosis for as long as I can remember. Back in high school, I wondered why my skin wouldn't fully retract, but that never got me into a rut. Trying to do so did hurt, though. Early college days, however, I finally decided to pull my skin all the way down and saw what was by then paraphimosis. I was ignorant to this, of course, and simply assumed this gross appearance was me doing something I shouldn't off – namely pulling the skin too far back.
But this leads me to another pointer: this condition hasn't caused me any genuine trouble. Sure, erections certainly are sore, but that's when the skin is forcibly retracted. Even then, THAT pain goes away with either some steroid cream or perseverance. This all struck me as odd when recently I read that paraphimosis is sometimes considered a medical emergency, and early symptoms of it has to be dealt with ASAP. Wow! Again, maybe that's because it could swell to alarming degrees. Lady luck, and all.
But never mind that, I do want to get this checked out and dealt with. Back in 2010, I learnt of tight foreskin and headed to the doctors. Steroid cream, did the trick. But phimosis came back, and I still had that tight mane under the head. Second trip in 2012, I brought up what was then the discovery of paraphimosis. I was given a shrug, and reassured it's simply phimosis I should worry about.
But not now. Now I know how my phimosis could be stopped for good, and I definitely do want some surgery done to fix this ugly condition. Thankfully by today, new medical techniques are around to treat it, so circumcision can be avoided. On top of returning my penis to pain-free erections, it'd more importantly prevent the risk of bursts or infections.
EDIT:
Poking around Google today, I stumbled upon the real nemesis: the phimotic ring; more generally known as a ridged band. This is where PART of the foreskin is tight compared to the rest, and leads to the tight band I mentioned above. It's all clicked together now. Paraphimosis was never an issue because I may not actually suffer from it after all — it's when the skin becomes trapped severely behind the head, and for me, it was never an issue to pull it back up — just a nuisance.
So for a month I'll try stretching the tight part of the skin. If that doesn't fix things, I'll try 'preprutioplasty' surgery – which is a limited dorsal slit )which itself is a limited circumcision(. I'm still uncertain, and I suspect the paraphimosis may be a edematous swelling in itself, rather than simply tight forskin. Regardless, the surgical treatment above would certainly resolve things.