A 37-year-old newlywed knew something was terribly wrong with his penis when he discovered a cauliflower-shaped growth beneath his foreskin in 2022.
Then came a discharge that smelled like spoiled fish. He also suffered severe pain and a startling change in his urine stream.
He hoped it was a fungal infection and bought medication online, but his wife wasn’t fooled. She booked him an appointment with a doctor who confirmed his worst fears — penile cancer.
“I was terrified at the word ‘cancer,’ and I thought that was the end of me,” Paul Lucas, now 40, told Hype Press.
“I knew nothing about penile cancer at this point, and the treatment sounded horrendous, especially after finding out I could lose some of my penis.”
Lucas lost his entire penis — a procedure called a penectomy — but doctors were able to construct a new one over a series of procedures.
His new penis gave him a new lease on life — and some interesting side effects.
“I finally feel happy in my body again and feel attractive for Nicky,” Lucas said of his wife, 38.
‘I couldn’t see a way out’
Lucas, a local government officer from Dudley, UK, figured doctors would simply cut off the head of his penis, since that’s where the growth was.
He wasn’t told until 24 hours after the October 2022 surgery that his entire penis had been removed, though he already suspected it was gone when his catheter tube was pulled.
“It was causing me incredible amounts of pain and discomfort, so I was, in a way, happy I wouldn’t be in pain,” Lucas said of the penectomy.
He was able to fully survey the damage on his second night home from the hospital, when Nicky changed his bandage.
“I hid my face under a pillow and just cried,” Lucas recalled to Hype Press.
“I asked her to leave me if she wished, without guilt, as she had a life to live and I was now a d–kless man and felt useless.”
Instead, she helped wash his body, changed his dressings and catheter and accompanied him to appointment after appointment.
Lucas said the operation didn’t destroy their marriage, but he struggled enormously with the belief that it had ruined his wife’s sex life.
“I felt a large amount of guilt as she was in a sexless relationship, and I couldn’t see a way out or forward,” Lucas explained.
‘Lucky in an unlucky way’
The surgery also changed Lucas’s daily life.
His urethra was rerouted, meaning he had to sit down to urinate. Using men’s toilets became a major challenge.
“Many are dirty, there’s no toilet paper, not many toilet stalls and the locks don’t work,” Lucas said.
He sought therapy to help accept his new reality.
Then, in July 2023, he got the call that changed his life. He was cancer-free.
He didn’t need further cancer treatment after the surgery, considering himself “lucky in an unlucky way.”
Lucas was also told there were options for creating a new penis, but the idea seemed “so far-fetched” that he never really believed it would happen.
“Reconstruction seemed like a fairy tale and not something that happens to normal people that lived in the West Midlands,” he explained.
When his doctor detailed the procedure, it sounded like something from “Star Trek.”
And there was one major obstacle — he needed to drop nearly 100 pounds before he could undergo the operation. He got to work in early 2025.
“In 10 years, I didn’t want to look back and think… what if?” Lucas said.
‘I believe I am a better person’
He opted for a complex three-stage reconstruction.
The first stage focused on devising the new phallus and urethra. The second stage involves creating the glans and sculpting it to look more realistic, and the third stage is for fitting an inflatable erectile device.
For Lucas’s first operation, in March 2026, University College Hospital surgeons used a technique known as a radial forearm flap phalloplasty.
Skin and tissue from his left forearm helped create the new phallus, while another section was used for the new urethra, what Lucas describes as a “tube within a tube.”
Over nine hours, surgeons also took nerves and an artery from his arm and connected them to the remaining nerves and blood vessels in the genital area.
And because Lucas had lost so much weight, there was an unexpected bonus.
Excess skin from his stomach was used to reconstruct his forearm, effectively giving him what he jokingly calls a “bonus tummy tuck.”
Unfortunately, the recovery was long and nerve-racking.
Nurses repeatedly checked on Lucas’s new phallus, which had to be propped at a 45-degree angle for the first two weeks to ensure proper blood flow.
Thankfully, he experienced only minor setbacks, like small infections.
And when he finally got to properly see and feel his new body, he had a rather unusual comparison.
“It looks like an anteater’s nose,” Lucas laughed. “It feels soft and warm to the touch.”
The reconstruction isn’t finished yet. He hopes his final surgery will take place in the spring or summer of 2027.
For now, sensation is slowly returning. He describes experiencing “zaps,” almost like tiny electric shocks, in his groin and different parts of the new penis as nerves begin growing into the reconstructed tissue.
He hopes eventually to regain erotic sensation.
And remarkably, Lucas and Nicky have already had sex using his reconstructed penis.
“My sensation hasn’t returned, and it will take a few years to get a complete erotic feeling, but it was an incredible and very emotional experience the first time we used my new penis to have sex,” he said.
But perhaps the biggest change has been in how Lucas sees himself.
He once believed that losing his penis meant losing his identity as a man. Now he sees it differently.
“A total penectomy seems like the end of the world for a man, and I thought that at first,” he said.
“But eventually it made me more considerate, empathetic, and I felt closer to my wife.”
And he has one message for those facing penile cancer, which affects nearly 2,300 men each year, according to the American Cancer Society.
“I would tell my past self not to doubt yourself, and that a man is more than what’s in between your legs, and that your wife loves you for you, and it’s not just about sex,” Lucas said.
“Although this experience has been awful, I believe I am a better person, and my relationship with Nicky has never been better.”