Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Wounded veteran’s joy after penis transplant
He says op made him feel ‘normal’ again
A SOLDIER who had the world’s first full penis and scrotum transplant has described it as, “the best decision I ever made”.
The veteran is now able to achieve a near-normal erection and enjoy a full sex life again – a year after the operation.
The former US serviceman, known only as Ray, said: “This surgery was a way for me to overcome that little subconscious voice or whatever it was that would always keep me feeling different from everyone else.
“This was actually something that could fix me. I could go back to being normal again.” Ray even contemplated suicide over the injuries he sustained from an IED in Afghanistan.
He said: “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.
“That injury, I felt like it banished me from a relationship. Like, that’s it, you’re done, you’re by yourself for the rest of your life. I struggled with even viewing myself as a man for a long time.”
Medics from the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, performed the 14-hour op, led by Dr Richard Redett. Nine plastic surgeons and two urological surgeons transplanted a deceased donor’s entire penis, scrotum and partial abdominal wall
Dr Redett said it was, “the most complex [transplant] to date”, and the first for a military veteran.
His colleague Dr WP Andrew Lee called such cases an, “unspoken injury of war” and said the aim was, “to restore a person’s sense of identity and manhood”.