A local government officer from Dudley is speaking publicly about his recovery after penile cancer led to the complete removal of his penis, followed by a complex multi-stage surgery to reconstruct one.
Paul Lucas, now 40, first noticed a cauliflower-shaped growth beneath his foreskin in 2022, along with a foul-smelling discharge, severe pain and a change in his urine stream. He initially hoped it was a fungal infection and bought medication online, but his wife, Nicky, 38, pushed him to see a doctor, who diagnosed penile cancer.
“I was terrified at the word ‘cancer,’ and I thought that was the end of me,” Lucas told Hype Press. “I knew nothing about penile cancer at this point, and the treatment sounded horrendous, especially after finding out I could lose some of my penis.”
Lucas underwent a penectomy in October 2022. He had expected surgeons to remove only the head of his penis, since that was where the growth was found, but was not told until 24 hours after the operation that the entire organ had been removed.
“It was causing me incredible amounts of pain and discomfort, so I was, in a way, happy I wouldn’t be in pain,” he said.
He fully confronted the change two nights after returning home, when Nicky changed his bandage. “I hid my face under a pillow and just cried,” he recalled. “I asked her to leave me if she wished, without guilt, as she had a life to live and I was now a dickless man and felt useless.”
Nicky instead helped wash him, changed his dressings and catheter, and accompanied him to his appointments. Lucas said he struggled with guilt over believing the surgery had ended their sex life. “I felt a large amount of guilt as she was in a sexless relationship, and I couldn’t see a way out or forward,” he said.
The operation also rerouted his urethra, meaning he now has to sit to urinate, which created everyday difficulties using public men’s toilets. “Many are dirty, there’s no toilet paper, not many toilet stalls and the locks don’t work,” he said. He sought therapy to help cope.
Cancer-free, then reconstruction
In July 2023, Lucas learned he was cancer-free and would not need further treatment. He described himself as “lucky in an unlucky way.”
Doctors told him reconstructive options existed, but he was sceptical. “Reconstruction seemed like a fairy tale and not something that happens to normal people that lived in the West Midlands,” he said, adding that the procedure described to him sounded like something from “Star Trek.”
Before he could qualify for surgery, he needed to lose nearly 100 pounds, a process he began in early 2025. “In 10 years, I didn’t want to look back and think … what if?” he said.
Lucas opted for a three-stage reconstruction: the first to build a new phallus and urethra, the second to create and sculpt a glans, and the third to fit an inflatable erectile device.
In March 2026, surgeons at University College Hospital carried out the first stage using a radial forearm flap phalloplasty. Skin and tissue from his left forearm were used to form the new phallus and a separate section to build the urethra, which Lucas describes as a “tube within a tube.” Over a nine-hour operation, surgeons connected nerves and an artery from his arm to remaining nerves and blood vessels in the genital area. Excess skin from his stomach, left loose after his weight loss, was used to reconstruct the forearm — what Lucas jokingly calls a “bonus tummy tuck.”
Recovery required close monitoring, with the new phallus propped at a 45-degree angle for two weeks to protect blood flow. He experienced only minor infections.
“It looks like an anteater’s nose,” Lucas said of the result. “It feels soft and warm to the touch.”
Looking ahead
Lucas’s final surgery is expected in spring or summer 2027. Sensation is gradually returning in the form of small electric-shock-like “zaps” as nerves grow into the reconstructed tissue, and he hopes to eventually regain erotic feeling.
He and Nicky have already had sex using the reconstructed penis. “My sensation hasn’t returned, and it will take a few years to get a complete erotic feeling, but it was an incredible and very emotional experience the first time we used my new penis to have sex,” he said.
Lucas said the experience changed how he views his own identity. “A total penectomy seems like the end of the world for a man, and I thought that at first,” he said. “But eventually it made me more considerate, empathetic, and I felt closer to my wife.”
Penile cancer affects nearly 2,300 men each year in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society. Lucas said he hopes his story reassures others facing the same diagnosis.
“I would tell my past self not to doubt yourself, and that a man is more than what’s in between your legs, and that your wife loves you for you, and it’s not just about sex,” he said. “Although this experience has been awful, I believe I am a better person, and my relationship with Nicky has never been better.”
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