The downside of a bionic penis? A two-week boner.
Imagine having a two-week boner. That’s just what 40-year old Andrew Wardle is about to experience when doctors turn on his new bionic penis.
Wardle was born with bladder exstrophy, where the organ forms outside the body. While doctors were able to insert it back into his body surgically when he was a baby, he grew up with no penis, though he did have testicles.
Wardle, who lives in the UK, recently decided to undergo a lengthy process where doctors built him a functioning phallus. (It had been done once before on another British man, Mohammad Abad, whose choice to lose his virginity with a famous sex worker got a lot of attention.) He has required more than 100 surgeries to get here, but he is now on the last leg of his journey. And before you ask: no, he didn’t have any say in how big it is.
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His new member was created using his own skin, muscle and nerves, taken from his arm. It contains cylinders that create an erection when they’re filled with fluid that is pumped in from a small pouch. The final step is for his doctors to go in and, for lack of a better term, turn it on.
He’ll have to spend three days in the hospital after the mechanics are fired up and then will have a boner for about two weeks. Yikes. Wardle wisely plans to spend that time at home, since you can imagine it’d be rather difficult to go roaming around town without arousing suspicious looks.
It may not surprise you that Wardle is dreading this prolonged erection, but, as he said in an interview with This Morning, he is very much looking forward to being on other side. Not for the sex; instead he’s focused on how much healthier he will be he will be. He’s endured years of kidney infections and other complications, which should improve now that he has a functioning penis.
Wardle has the support of his girlfriend, Fedra Fabian, who has been with him since 2013. Though somehow she didn't know about his condition until they'd already been dating for nine months -- and then she found out about it by reading about it the newspaper.
But she's stuck by him and will now get to participate in the, um, testing of his new equipment.
Cassie Murdoch is Mashable's Culture Editor.. Before coming here, Cassie was Senior Culture Writer at Vocativ. She previously wrote for Jezebel and The Hairpin. Cassie spends most of her time thinking about and consuming cheese in all its glorious forms.
