12 years ago, the penis of Malcolm MacDonald, a British father of two children, literally fell off. At that time he suffered from a terrible infection in the blood that began to gangrene the fingers of his extremities and his virile member. One day in the bathroom, the penis, which had turned black, fell out. “Gone”, “goodbye”, recounted in a television documentary called The man with a penis in his armwhich aired this week on Britain’s Channel 4.
His prospects were terrifying, and faced with the possibility of being maimed, MacDonald turned to drugs and alcohol. In 2015, however, a group of British doctors, led by David Ralph, an expert in phallus reconstruction at University College Hospital in London, offered him an option: make a penis from flaps of skin from the arm and connect it to the testicles, which did not suffer from sepsis.
Doctors chose the arm for quality and feel reasons. With that skin they also created a urethra. The cost of the operation would be 60,000 dollars. The 47-year-old man not only accepted, but asked that the penis be five centimeters longer than the previous one. The doctors pleased him.
To make the organ, experts took skin and muscle from his arm and a vein from his right leg. The skin was molded around the vein to look like a penis. Once ready, it was time to implement it in his position. But in surgery a complication arose due to lack of oxygen in the blood, so the doctors had to abort the procedure and connect the new 15-centimeter penis to his left arm temporarily, in order to keep the member’s tissue healthy.
However, a series of delays in hospitals and the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic meant that the man should have hung the member on his arm for six years.. At that time, MacDonald says, she had some very embarrassing moments because even though she wore long-sleeved shirts, that appendage on her forearm would swing free and peek out from under her clothes, which would impress people. In the documentary, he says that once he was trying to grab a product in the supermarket, next to an old woman, when the penis came out and brushed the lady’s face. She mightn’t go to the pool with her two children and when she gave someone a hug she felt a little weird. Fortunately, while she was in the forearm, the member might not have erections.
Last year, following a nine-hour surgery involving plastic surgeons, urologists and other surgical expertsMacDonald managed to have the member implanted in the right place. “The first thing I did was look down and when I saw it I said ‘we did it this time.’ I felt like a real man once more,” he recounted in the documentary.
MacDonald will also be able to have sex, as doctors installed an implant consisting of two tubes that allow him to inflate his penis with a hand pump to achieve a mechanical erection. She will also be able to urinate. All this makes him feel very lucky. “It will be a great story to tell my grandchildren,” he concluded.
