A man in Alabama went to the hospital to have a routine circumcision procedure, but when he woke up, he had no penis at all. Now the man, whose name has not been made public, is suing the hospital where the apparently botched surgery took place, according to legal papers filed Tuesday in Alabama’s Jefferson County Court.
Not only did the man never give his okay for doctors to amputate his penis, when he awoke from anesthesia to find himself with no penis, neither doctors nor hospital officials gave him any reason why his whole male organ was removed, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit names as defendants Baptist Health System, which does business as Princeton Baptist Medical Center, Urology Centers of Alabama PC and the Simon-Williamson Clinic PC. The suit filed by the alleged victim and his wife also targets two doctors, Vincent M. Bivins and Alan C. Aikens.
The plaintiff was under the care of one urologist at Urology Centers of Alabama, but a different doctor carried out the surgery, resulting in the man waking up without a penis, the lawsuit says.
The surgery took place sometime in June, says the lawsuit, which does not give a specific date for the alleged surgery that went horribly awry.
The victim says he was never warned that what appeared to be a simple circumcision, in which only foreskin is removed, could result in a penis amputation. The lawsuit also charges the doctors with negligence for not seeking help from another doctor when things started to go wrong with the circumcision.
While the lawsuit does not give a specific amount of money demanded by the victim as compensation, it charges that the man has been forced to spend considerable sums managing an extremely painful recovery process.
The man’s wife is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, seeking damages for “loss of consortium.” In other words, she wants compensation for her husband’s inability to have sex with her, due to the loss of his penis.
The AL.com news site attempted to get a comment from Baptist Health System, but a spokesperson declined, citing the pending lawsuit.
Doctors advise men considering any type of surgical procedure on the penis to carefully consider their options.
A recent article by CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen advises men to “think twice (or more)” before letting even highly trained doctors carry out penis surgery.
“It’s a highly vascularized organ, which is a fancy way of saying there is a lot of blood running in and out of it,” Cohen wrote. “So cutting into it can be risky.”
Such surgeries on the penis include not only circumcision, but removal of genital warts — which may not always be necessary — penis enlargement surgery and penile implants to treat erectile dysfunction.