A man is suing a hospital after losing most of his penis to a flesh-eating superbug he caught while recovering from routine surgery.
Cancer survivor Andre Lane, 61, contracted the deadly necrotising fasciitis following an operation to remove his prostate gland at Southend Hospital in Essex.
Although he survived, Lane’s genitals were so badly damaged that he lost most of his penis and is no longer able to have sex.
He was forced to use a catheter and colostomy bag for two years, until he was fitted with a special device to help him urinate.
The disease also left him with a protruding stomach, where the outer tissue had been “eaten away.”
Lane, from Essex, spent eight weeks in the hospital after contracting the bug in March of 2013.
He said that he has only recently started to come to terms with his injuries.
Lane is taking legal action against Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust over claims that a bowel puncture that occurred during the original operation went undetected for days afterwards, which led to the infection.
“It has just been a horrendous experience. I thought I was going to die. That night I was taken to theatre three times while the surgeons took more and more tissue away. I lost from my bellybutton to just above the groin and I’ve not got much left of a penis,” he said in a statement released by his lawyers, Slater & Gordon.
“I was super fit before all this. I had a good body, but now I look like I’m nine months pregnant. I can’t ever bear to look at myself naked.
“The most difficult bit is not being able to have sex with my wife anymore. We’re a normal couple who enjoyed it as part of a healthy relationship and I do miss that,” he said.
Lane married his long-term partner Sue after being discharged from the hospital, but felt unable to return to his job as an architectural draftsman and now works as a carer.
“I’d never even heard of the bug before and had no idea of the damage it could do, but if speaking out can raise awareness and stop one more person having to go through what I’ve been through then it will have been worth it,” he said.