Seriously, this isn't fake news: Penis grown on man's arm is now in the right spot

A British man who lived for six years with a penis constructed and grown on his arm has finally gotten the appendage moved to the right spot, in a surgical procedure that took about nine hours. “Can you imagine six years of your life with a penis swinging on your arm? It’s been a nightmare, but it’s gone now—the little bugger,” Malcolm MacDonald, a 47-year-old mechanic from Thetford, Norfolk told U.K. newspaper, the Sun. MacDonald lost his penis in 2010, when a perineum infection he had been struggling with for some time developed into sepsis. His fingers, toes and penis turned black as a result. Shortly after, his penis “just dropped off onto the floor,” MacDonald recalled. Because he had known “deep down” that he was going to lose his penis, when it did come off MacDonald “just picked it up and put in the bin” and went to the hospital. Read: Why the big head is still on top in sex medicine “They said the best they could do for me was to roll the remaining stump up like a little sausage roll,” he said. “It was heartbreaking.” With £50,000 in funding from the United Kingdom’s National Health System, Dr. David Ralph, a urologist and professor at University College Hospital in London, built an entirely new penis using flesh and tissue from MacDonald’s arm. Dr. Ralph—a renowned phalloplasty surgeon who over the last 20 years has reconstructed penises for about 130 men and performed more than 1,000 operations on transgender patients—opened up a flap of skin from the left arm of MacDonald, who is right-handed. This skin flap—which stayed attached to MacDonald’s arm—was rolled to form the beginning of a new penis, with its own blood vessels and nerves. A urethra was created and two tubes—designed to be inflated by a hand pump to allow for a mechanical erection—were installed. The latter components, which made up the penile shaft, were detached from MacDonald’s arm but the rolled-up skin flap was left to develop over time into a fully constructed penis. Read: Toronto hospital says surgery program will help trans patients 'live true lives' The end-product is a six-inch penis—two inches longer than MacDonald’s original body part, as he had requested. “When I saw it on my arm for the first time I was so, so proud,” said MacDonald. “After everything I had been through it didn’t feel weird at all—it was just a part of me.” In a 2018 interview, Dr. Ralph described his work as one that, "always boils down to the same operation but it's for lots of different reasons." In some cases, he said, he has performed phalloplasty on war veterans who lost their penis because of a landmine, and on penile cancer patients. One patient was born without a penis. "I have also seen patients who have chopped off their own penis in a psychotic episode," said Dr. Ralph. Read: New frontiers in tissue engineering Six years of living with a penis on his arm has exposed MacDonald to a number of awkward situations. On one occasion, the penis slipped out of his sleeve while he was reaching up a grocery shelf to help an elderly customer. Strangers have also asked about the strange bulge in his sleeve. But after suffering from severe depression in the two years after he lost his penis, MacDonald was just grateful to have his reconstructed body part ready for implantation. He learned to make light of his situation and even figured out a way to tuck darts under the appendage during pub nights. “I took to it so much I nicknamed it ‘Jimmy’—that was what me and my mates called each other growing up and this penis was definitely my new mate,” he said. Read: And now it’s women’s turn

Seriously, this isn't fake news: Penis grown on man's arm is now in the right spot

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