Like any other part of the body, our naughty bits are prone to injury. However, unlike more run-of-the-mill cuts and scrapes, we are less likely to seek medical attention for these afflictions, let alone ask our mothers to kiss it and make it better.
While it can be embarrassing to have such intimate injuries treated, swallowing one’s pride is the best remedy. Although genital injuries are rarely fatal, they could effect fertility, potency and the general appearance of the area. If you become injured, the best way to avoid any lasting damage is to overcome your self-consciousness and seek medical attention for all but the smallest and most Band-Aid-worthy cuts. However, while you’re on your way to the nearest emergency room or waiting for an ambulance to arrive, there are a few things you can do to help the healing process along.
As anybody who has watched 20 minutes of slapstick comedy or survived their childhood can tell you, injuries to the groin can hurt quite a lot. This is for the same reason that gentler manipulation can feel erotic: a large number of nerves. Unless one of the arteries in the thigh has been broken, any bleeding in the area will probably not be deadly. Bleeding of this scale can be controlled or even stopped by pressing on the cut with clean (preferably sterile) gauze or fabric.
Of course, life isn’t all simple, albeit painful, cuts; there are more serious injuries possible such as when the skin is completely or partially torn away, either completely or partially. In this situation, bleeding can still be slowed with direct pressure. Also important to remember is that anything separated from the body, whether it is a chunk of skin or a whole penis (shudder), it should also be wrapped up, put into a plastic bag and put on ice. Keeping the amputated part cool increases the odds of successful surgical reattachment, but no reattachment can take place until you and the severed part reach the hospital, so don’t delay the trip to look for ice.
If you have been stabbed or impaled, direct pressure can still be used, but the object itself shouldn’t be removed. Even the sharpest knife, if kept from moving, will not do any more damage, and removing it could cause more bleeding and higher odds of infection.
Almost anything that can happen to the rest of the body can happen to the genitals. They can even break. The human penis contains no bones (nicknames notwithstanding), but it does contain three tubes of spongy tissue and when they break, it is known as a penile fracture. These tubes fill up with blood until they are almost as rigid as an actual bone. Like bones, and other rigid objects, when enough pressure is applied to them in the right direction, the tubes can snap and a loud ‘pop’ is usually heard.
Cleveland Clinic urologist Dr. Drogo Montague said the most common way to break your penis is during sex when a man thrusts too hard and hits his partner’s pubic bone, or when a woman is too wild on top. The break releases the blood from the tissue and leaves the penis quite dramatically bent, but not broken entirely off. Instead, the penis becomes swollen and black and blue like a bruise but is much more painful. The tubes can be repaired surgically, but if left untreated could heal so that the penis is permanently bent, or even nonfunctional.
When you have an injury, getting it treated should be your top priority, no matter how embarrassing it might be. Please, value your body (and quite possibly your future happiness) more than your pride.