A comedian who broke his penis has written an entire book about the experience that may be every man's biggest fear.
For Ross Asdourian, 32, the nightmare became a reality about three years ago when he suffered a penile fracture while having sex with a woman in his Manhattan apartment.
The New York native underwent an extensive surgery the next morning to repair the damage, the Daily Mail reported.
For the following month he had to ask others, including his mother, to help him urinate, and it was several months before he regained sexual function.
Today, Asdourian releases a book about the traumatic incident and everything he learned from it called Broken Bananah: Comedy, Life, and Sex ...Without a Penis.
"I think that all men in the depths of their brain know that this is possible. And I will go a step further and say that most men have probably had scares where maybe it bent a little bit, myself included," the comedian and filmmaker told CNN.
While rare, there have been several hundred cases of penile fracture reported in the US, an injury known as a 'corpus cavernosa rupture' in the medical community, according to Dr Rajveer Purohit, director of reconstructive urology at Mount Sinai Hospital and the lead doctor on Asdourian's case.
The corpus cavernosa is sponge-tissue that runs along the length of the penis.
"It's a unique tissue that's only present in the penis," Dr Purohit told CNN.
"When you get an erection, blood flows into the corpus cavernosa, and it fills up like a sponge."
Asdourian had to undergo an extensive surgery following the incident, and for a month after the injury he was unable to urinate on his own. Photo / Facebook
A small study by researchers at Boston Medical Center in 2004 found that certain positions have a higher risk of injury, including having the other partner on top.
The force causes the material surrounding the corpus cavernosa to tear, which leads to the rupture.
"You can imagine a balloon that gets filled up with water, and then you have this tense sheath that's surrounding the balloon, and that's what gives you the stiffness with an erection. And the fracture is a rupture of the balloon and the sheath surrounding the balloon," Purohit said.
The majority of people who experience penile fractures report hearing a popping noise.
Asdourian said as soon as he heard the noise, he knew something was very wrong.
"We were basically approaching the finish line ... and I came out, and when I went to go back in, she was pushing back, and basically it just popped," he said.
"I breathed in the pain for a couple of beats, rolled over, flipped on the lights and called 911," he said.
Ross Asdourian's book Broken Bananah. Photo / Facebook
He was taken by ambulance to Weill Cornell Medical Center where he got a cystoscopy, a procedure that involves inserting a camera into the urethra to assess the damage.
The doctor who performed the cystoscopy was named Dr Wang, Asdourian said.
"The first big test was to see if I could pee in a jug - and I couldn't," he said.
"And if you can't pee, then there's a ticking time bomb on what they're going to do."
Asdourian's rupture was even more severe than most because it was bilateral, meaning that he had damaged both corpora cavernosa as well as severed his urethra.
Bilateral ruptures have been found to occur in about 10 percent of penile fractures.
The next morning, he underwent a three-hour surgery called a urethroplasty to repair the injury.
'If you don't repair the urethra, you can get scar tissue that would prevent them from urinating normally, or a fistula forms where the urine would have just been pooling outside the urethra,' Dr Purohit said.
For the following four weeks he was unable to urinate on his own and it took several months before he regained full sexual functioning.
"A score of people helped me pee, including my mother, as I shuffled around New York City tethered to a urination tube for a month," he wrote on the Kickstarter page.
"Ross preserved his erections, so he's doing well with that, and his urine flow is completely normal - so basically, he had no negative outcomes," Dr Purohit said.
Asdourian described the experience on a Kickstarter page that raised almost $8,500 to launch his book, Broken Bananah.
"This is a coming of age tale about the time I tore two muscles in my beloved rooster and severed my urethra," he wrote.
"This is the funny/not-so-funny story of the accident, the recovery, and all the pain, love, and philosophy in between.'"
He told CNN: "I hope that [the book] reaches people and it makes people laugh, and in a time when people are having a tough time laughing, I think that this is something that we can all laugh about.
"I think everyone has a story to tell and this just happened to be mine."
He added that the experience has made him see life through a more positive lens.
"It can always be worse. Even when we lose our core family jewels, it truly can always be worse. And that's a good perspective to have, because we're just a blip on the radar, and there are miracles happening every day."
