Before the infection I’d had a couple of days of enjoying peeing normally, with a really strong flow. After the infection I assumed that the flow was being restricted by my swollen prostate. Once my prostate was back to normal it was obvious that the stricture had recurred within a month of the urethrotomy.
Reading the research on urethral strictures it seems that urethrotomy is often unsuccessful with strictures of the penile urethra, especially if they’re quite long. In some places they’re recommending doing urethrography to check the size and location before performing urethrotomy and in some cases going directly to urethroplasty instead.
At my next visit to urology, three months after the urethrotomy, the doctor was determined that the standard treatment was to repeat the urethrotomy. Fortunately I’d prepared and was able to insist that all current research indicated that the first one had been pretty much doomed to failure and any successive urethrotomy had almost no chance of success (due to the location and speed of recurrence). After trying to scare me with warnings of the dangers of urethroplasty he finally gave in and agreed to refer me to a more senior urologist.