“I remember thinking a quick thought: ‘This isn’t good.’ And then I was on my back.”
Until recently, the only treatment available for men in his situation would have been phalloplasty - a transplant of a makeshift member made of tissue, blood vessels and nerves taken from a forearm or thigh, which requires an external pump to become erect.Grafting a donor penis involves many different kinds of tissue, and requires stitching nerves and blood vessels smaller than 2mm wide.
The first rudimentary penis transplant was performed in 2006 on a 44-year-old in China, who reportedly soon had it removed at his wife’s behest. And in 2017, the same South African doctors from the 2014 transplant did so again on a 41-year-old man who also suffered from a circumcision gone awry.His op involved a transplanted piece of tissue measuring 10ins by 11ins in total and weighing 5lbs.Ray, who’d lost the entirety of his reproductive organs, was also given a new scrotum - but not testicles, according to his doctors.
The Technology Review reports that a total of 1,367 Americans in the military suffered major genital injury in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2013 — and experts say it’s taking a major toll on veterans’ mental health.“You can’t put a number on how significantly this affects one of these wounded warriors’ lives.
“It was one of those injuries that really stresses you out and you think, ‘Why would I keep going?’ I guess I always just kept this real hope that there’s an answer out there.”