I used to be an anaesthetist, mainly in urology and gynaecology. I’ve seen more naked bits than the average man in the street. What you see is just part of the job.
I had to have a major operation for the prostate cancer, which comes with three downsides, one of which is incontinence. I was totally incontinent, although that’s been fixed now with an artificial sphincter. When I had the operation my granddaughter was coming out of nappies – that really hurt in a strange way.
I used to go swimming at the leisure centre and there are communal changing-rooms. I didn’t want my incontinence treated with bags, because my ego couldn’t cope with people seeing that. I just used pads in pants and went through millions of them. It was very, very important to me to look normal in front of other people.
The second downside is that you lose penile size. The surgery takes away the support from the inside. My penis was average before the surgery, but my limp penile size is now 50 per cent smaller than it used to be. I’m a doctor and I’ve worked with urologists, so everyone assumed I knew everything and nobody warned me about this.
