Unleash the Sharpei!

Sometimes, a man's foreskin gets stuck in the retracted position. The tight band of the inflexible foreskin acts as a barrier to return blood flow, causing the head of the penis to swell, become engorged, turn red, turn black and eventually (if left long enough) fall off.

This happens most commonly in little boys - kids who play with their foreskin and forget to replace it. It can sometimes happen in men with botched circumcisions, who have lots of scar tissue on their remaining foreskin. And sometimes, little old men with dementia wake up for a pee during the night and forget to put the turtle back in its shell before going back to bed. This was my patient.

The great news is that my patient, a gentleman of some advanced years, did not have any pain with his paraphimosis. Yes, his penis was red, swollen and tender to touch, but he was pleasantly unaffected by the pain. His adult daughter was beside herself, wanting to support her father during his ER visit, but also really really really not wanting to see her Dad's schlong. We did a dance, trading places every time I went in and out of the room.

The treatments for paraphimosis are varied and mostly case studies. It doesn't happen often enough for a large body of evidence to exist. Sometimes people drain the blood with needles. Sometimes people use force to drag the foreskin over the mushroom cap. And sometimes you simply slice through that foreskin with a scalpel, releasing the tension and sending a wave of stagnant blood back into the body.

I did not do this. I dipped a stretchy bandage into a 50% sugar solution. I wrapped the wet bandage around the swollen red tissue firmly, but not tightly. I walked away (do-si-do with the daughter) and came back in 5 minutes. Then, I gently but firmly eased the foreskin over the now-shrunken penis. The osmotic pressure from the dextrose solution pulls the fluid from the foreskin. The compression helps. It all moisturizes the tissue and boom! The pig is back in his blanket.

I was lucky. I don't know if I could slice a confused old man's penis with a blade. But medicine with a spoonful of sugar? Happy to provide.