Have you guys heard about the story where a man puts insulation foam into
his penis? Well this story was actually published a couple years ago and it
recently came out in the media and I happen to be good friends with the
author of the case report, Dr. Susan Macdonald. She's gonna let us know exactly
what happened and what you need to know. If you're new here, I'm Dr. Rena Malik and
we make urologic content about bladder health, sexual health, and so much more
make sure you subscribe and share this channel with your friends.
[Music] susan thank you so much for joining me
thank you for having me rina so this is such a crazy story and i'm so
honored to know you and you're the one who wrote this case report so tell me
your memory of how this all went down yes and in memory it is very fairly
memorable so i got a call from a colleague that a patient had come in
who had inserted some spray foam into his urethra
and so in hearing the story in more detail the patient was someone who
instrumented his urethra for sexual gratification and so in trying to
amplify his erection and have a more pleasurable experience had put the tiny
little straw on the end of a spray foam can into his urethra
and inadvertently their partner hit the button
and that filled their urinary tract with the spray foam
and then as people often do when something untoward happens during a
sexual experience they wait and hope that it will kind of resolve and it did
not he was having significant trouble urinating so i think approximately three
days later he came in and we got a cat scan that showed a significant amount of
spray foam in his bladder as well as his urethra wow wow that's so so crazy so
they actually took the straw without the intention of of using the spray foam at
least that's the way they told you correct
yes and so that yeah so that wasn't the intention the intention was just to
sound with the actual straw with the straw correct but then inadvertently the
spray foam was activated got it so i understand people do
urethral sounding for pleasure but does it also help them with their erectile
function um i would say only in so much as uh anyone has increased erections
when something more pleasurable is occurring it's not a traditional
treatment for erectile dysfunction but whatever anyone finds pleasurable is
going to help them get an erection yeah so that's why because all the articles
that were posted about this so for those of you who don't know this article was
actually published a couple years ago and all of a sudden a few weeks ago it
became big news in conventional media and a lot of the headlines are like this
guy injected spray foam or you know insulation into his urethra to help his
erectile dysfunction which i you know i was when i read that i was like that's
not really something that i've heard before mostly it's always been for
pleasure yeah i confess i was actually confused when i got wind that my case
report had hit the media and the internet and then the tagline was that
man tries to treat erectile dysfunction with spray foam and i had to go back and
read my own article and it was merely that he said he was having some trouble
getting erections and he was trying to self-stimulate right yeah so exactly so
this is not going to help people who are having trouble with getting erections do
not recommend definitely do not recommend yes if you're having erectile
dysfunction please just see your friendly local sexual medicine urologist
who can help you with some standard of care treatments
absolutely and if you're wondering what those are
check out my videos on erectile dysfunction and medications for erectile
dysfunction and i'll link those in the description as well so in the article i
actually have to look at the name of what you wrote because i'd never heard
this terminology before but it's polyembolocoilomania what exactly is
that uh that is the insertion of any kind of foreign object into one's
urethra okay all right so you know this patient also when you went to try and
treat him you found that he had stricture disease
so maybe let's take a step back how do you normally treat someone who's got
something stuck in their urethra and then how did the stricture disease play
into that so typically when people insert things into the urethra and
something goes awry it's because there's no flared base or a larger end to it so
it gets lost in the urethra and and travels either deeper in the urethra or
into their bladder fortunately most urologists were very
skilled in endoscopic procedures so that means like a very small camera goes
through their urethra deeper into the urethra or into the bladder and then
it's kind of like playing the claw game at the arcade but without the sharp
edges we use something like a fishing net that goes in and then grabs it and
then we pull it back out the difficult part about this case and
what really motivated me to write the case report was the quantity of material
within their urinary tract so the entire bladder was filled with if you imagine
like the head of a cauliflower that amount of material and the pictures are
in the case report that demonstrate that and then the urethra we we tried to take
the endoscopic instruments and basket from the urethra out
um in both directions from the bladder
after we opened it from the urethra as well
but that just wasn't possible because the patient had stricter disease
which is narrow places in their urethra and so it was kind of like multiple
hourglass type shapes and so they had made an internal cast of their urethra
and you couldn't grab the pieces because they were anchored by the narrow portion
so we had to uh surgically incise a good portion of the urethra to get all those
pieces out it was quite challenging yeah that does not sound fun and people can
get strictures for all sorts of reasons so you can get strictures because you
were born with them you can get them from having sexually transmitted
infections and most commonly trauma and in this case i would presume that the
patient was probably sounding for years or for some time before they came in and
that's probably where they developed the stricture disease yeah absolutely arena
so they had instrumented their urethra quite a bit before and with any kind of
sharp edges or object that causes trauma it causes scar tissue and unfortunately
in a tube scar tissue just makes the lumen more narrow so that's what we mean
when we talk about stricture disease yeah and so if you think you might have
a stricture you might notice that you're having difficulty emptying your bladder
you're straining to empty or even you're having some more urgency
or frequency so if you're having those symptoms make sure you go get checked
out it could be a stricture it could be something else but make sure you come
and get that checked out and uh and don't delay yeah and rita i just like to
add to that one of the funnier presentations one of my patients with
strictures told me he went to a sporting event with his family member and they
were side by side at the urinal and he took about four times as long to urinate
and then his family member said what's up with that and that's how he actually
came to the urologist and got diagnosed with the stricture is he had a weak
stream and it was just taking him a really long time yeah absolutely that's
a very common presentation where it just takes forever or takes a long time to to
start the stream and i actually um i think a couple years ago reacted to a
tv show where they really depicted this well so i'll link that as well up here
and you can check it out so what are some of the craziest things that you've
seen people put in their urethra um i think it's fair to say that
household implements in general get inserted in the heat of the moment
writing objects crowns pens pencils team seem to be popular things that are
cylindrically shaped so like paint brushes
i saw the little beaded keychain the metal balls
get inserted one time so those are some popular items
yeah i had one patient with a toothbrush that got stuck and then
instead of coming to the er they broke off the toothbrush and then there was a
piece of toothbrush actually like stuck in their bladder and urethra and then i
have a herd of people using you know those little magnetic bucky balls which
get stuck and then what happened is they got stuck and coiled in the bladder and
so you couldn't remove them because they're all magnetically stuck to each
other so that's also a very challenging and difficult thing and again do not
recommend correct yeah they do make
things to safely put in your urethra and step one on that would be something that
you're not going to lose so actually after this incident i had
looked up some things and on websites they make sounds with flared bases just
like they make you know they make sex toys for uh anuses and such so that you
don't lose them and so it just has a wider base so that you can insert and
then it won't drop in yeah exactly and and if you there's also
you can buy surgical grade urethral sounds you can find those online and
those are great too because they're meant to
um to not to not get lost as well what are some other safe practices that
you'd recommend for people if they are wanting to urethral sound and uh and
need some advice so i think uh sterility is key because urethral sounding can
lead to infections lubrication as always in both our sports
uh is key you want lubrication is your friend
um i think gravity is also your friend you do not want to push if you're going
to put things in your urethra just kind of let them fall in gently
if you get any resistance whatsoever stop what you're doing you can cause a
significant amount of bleeding trauma and scarring
i also think just for my two cents as someone who fixes urethras for a living
i know that the medical grade sounds the metal sounds are available but i would
use something like either a self-lubricated catheter that you could
get from a supply store uh or if that's not quite sexy enough
maybe consider some of the sex toy shops have silicone sort of tubes that you can
put in because they're less rigid so i feel like you're less likely
to hit the walls and sort of cause trauma
yeah that's a great point i would also add that you know when you're using
lubricant the lubricant itself can get unsterile because it can get bacteria
inside inside so i tell people use kind of the single serve lubricants like the
small pockets and throw it away when you're done make sure your hands are
clean make sure the sound is clean uh and and you know while we don't
recommend people doing the original sounding we realize people are going to
do it and they enjoy it and so we're going to give you this advice so that
hopefully it helps you if you fall into that camp
yeah generally speaking i wouldn't recommend it but people are going to do
what they find pleasurable so if you're going to do it we just want to provide
some recommendations so you can do it safely well thank you so much dr
mcdonald is there anything else you want our viewers to know
no i think that about covers it dr malik thank you so much for having me