A British man who was born without a penis is preparing to have sex for the first time after being fitted with a bionic manhood.
Andrew Wardle successfully underwent the final stage of a £50,000 penile implant operation at London’s University Hospital on Friday and has been given the all clear to finally lose his virginity.
As a test run, the 44-year-old will have an erection for the next ten days before his implant is deflated.
Doctors have told Andrew he must then wait six weeks before having sex with his long-term girlfriend Fedra Fabian.
The successful phalloplasty operation – which involves having a pump fitted to create an erection – will allow Andrew to feel like any other man.
While he is looking forward to having sex it is the addition of the male organ that will transform his life. He told MailOnline: ‘I’m very excited that I can move on now. But I think having sex for the first time is more of a big deal for everyone else than it is for me.
‘I’ve spent 44 years without a penis and I’ve coped with not having sex for all that time. It will take me a while to get in the swing of things.
‘Of course, I’m looking forward to it. But, for me, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all. It’s a by-product of the operation. It will enable me to feel part of society.
He went on: ‘I’m feeling good because they’ve given me painkillers but I’m sure I will feel a bit sore later on. I do feel different. I’m very aware there’s some robotics inside me but it feels a part of me now. I’m very aware that I am half-human half-robot at the moment. I’m like the bionic man. I will even be able to perform if I am drunk.’
Andrew, from Manchester was born with bladder exstrophy, a rare birth defect that means the organ formed on the outside of his body. Although he has testicles, the one-in-20-million condition meant Andrew was born without a penis.
As a child he underwent a surgical procedure to create an artificial opening known as a stoma in his urinary system. He had 15 operations to build a tube from his bladder so he could pass water normally and suffered from kidney problems.
His rare birth defect led Andrew to attempt suicide but in 2012 he was given hope after being referred to Dan Wood, a consultant urologist at UCLH in London
He said: ‘My GP knew about my depression and suicide attempts. She told me: “You can’t live like this”.
‘I thought: “I’ve heard all this before,” but she actually got in touch with Mr Wood and said: “I’ve got a guy who wants to meet you.”
‘I went down to London and I was so skint I had to sleep on the streets. But it was worth it.
‘Until then everybody had said: “I can’t do anything.” But he said: “I can build you a new bladder and my friend can build you a penis.”
‘It took me the whole journey home to understand what he meant. I thought: “I’ve been in every hospital in the country and they’ve never said this before”.’
Andrew had his first operation to remove his urostomy bag – his urine had been diverted into a specially-converted stoma – in February 2014.
He now has a Mitrofanoff – or catheter – to enable him to go to the lavatory. ‘I think that saved my life more than my penis,’ he said.
‘The urostomy was the worst thing. I didn’t feel human, but I thought I was stuck with it.
‘Now I have freedom. I’m never busting for the toilet any more. I find it better than a normal bladder.’
However, his new bladder did cause complications. ‘The complete procedure was supposed to take two years,’ he said, ‘but in the end it was five years.
‘They found a tiny pin prick in my abdomen, which slowed things down, which could have got infected.
‘It caused a huge delay but there was nothing I could do about it because there was nowhere else I could go.
‘They looked at operating, but it would have meant working around work they had already done so in the end they decided to avoid it.’
Meanwhile, Mr Wood referred Andrew to see his colleague David Ralph, a fellow urologist and specialist in genital reconstruction.
Andrew and his surgeon decided the size of his appendage. ‘They check your arm,’ explained Andrew. ‘I had a healthy forearm, so I got a nice size penis.’
Then, in November 2015, Dr Ralph operated on Andrew, building the penis from the skin, muscles and nerves in his left arm and the vein in his right leg.
‘Nobody told me until afterwards,’ he laughed. ‘I had slashes all over my body when I woke up.
‘They moved all the muscle from my arm and then gave me a bum lift, the skin on my arm came from my bum.
‘The skin does feel tight, but I have feeling and everything now. It’s amazing. The scars don’t bother me but I’m going to have it tattooed.
‘Otherwise I will have to cover it up when I go to Tesco. I don’t want people coming up to me and asking me about it. It’s too weird a conversation.
‘Originally I was going to rush into it but then I thought: “It’s such a special thing that’s happened to me, I want to give it some thought”.’
After a three-year delay, while doctors debated what to do about the pin prick in his side, Andrew had his third operation last December.
Mr Ralph inserted the reservoir component of his penile implant into the left side of his abdomen and capped it off ready to be connected.
He and his team also sculpted the head of his penis.
Then, at midday on Friday, he was back on the operating table for two hours to have his phalloplasty completed.
The final decision was whether to have one or two tubes inserted into his penis. ‘I decided one was fine for me,’ he joked. ‘I’m not a porn star.’
Andrew said a surgeon in America told him he likely had the most expensive appendage in the world. ‘Normally this surgery takes just three operations. But that does not take into account the other operations I’ve had,’ he said.
‘I was talking to a surgeon in America and he said it would easily be worth a million dollars – the world’s most expensive penis.’
MailOnline