Ouch! With sex injuries, love really hurts

Brian Alexander • E-mail

The British erotic retail chain Ann Summers recently released a poll asking people if they had ever been injured during sex. One in three said they hurt themselves somewhat routinely, though the injuries were about what you might expect: rug burns (to, ahem, the knees), muscle pulls, a conk on the noggin from, say, banging into the headboard.

But at Sexploration we hear stories, sometimes from emergency room doctors in bars. By the third martini, the stories often begin with, “You wouldn’t believe what I saw last night…”

And so I decided to call around to emergency rooms and ask sober ER docs about the things they see, and, more importantly, what advice they might have based on their experiences, not only how to avoid the damage, but how to handle the delicate task of seeking help once the damage is done.

I didn’t have much luck. One prig in a Phoenix ER became outraged and hung up on me — twice — before I could even explain the context of my questions. “This is a very inappropriate topic,” he shouted as he slammed down the phone.

Inappropriate? Tell it to this guy, who I read about when I started scanning the medical literature: "A 29-year-old man heard a snap during sexual intercourse followed by immediate detumescence and a swelling of the penile basis and scrotum, due to a penile fracture."

I’d call that an emergency.

In fact, as much as I wish it were, breaking your penis isn’t rare. Guys do it when they get all pile-drivery and they miss the bull's-eye, or when she’s riding Bronco Billy and slips off the saddle. Bend a penis past the breaking point and you can snap the inner chambers, releasing blood into surrounding areas. 

Ouch!

One guy, whose girlfriend made an awkward landing in 1994, underwent emergency surgery and subsequently sued her claiming that years of sexual dysfunction resulted. He lost in court.

Don't try this at home
But men don’t need women to help them break their penises. It’s amazing what guys do to the poor thing. They “incarcerate” it in steel rings, attach radiator hose clamps, play mumblety-peg with it and a staple gun. 

From another journal report: “We report removal of heavy iron (barbell) and steel (sledgehammer head) items incarcerating the penis with a heavy-duty air grinder provided by the fire department.”

If there’s an imaginable way to masturbate, some man has tried it. 

“In the hospital the patient reported that his penis got caught in the hose attachment of an old Kobold vacuum cleaner…”

Women are no slouches either.

“We present the radiological findings of a healthy young woman who presented with acute onset of abdominal pain and was found to have extensive pneumoperitoneum.” That means she had air in her abdomen. And where did the air come from? It was “Jacuzzi-jet induced.” 

Many sex injuries happen simply because somebody gets a little carried away.

“A 64-year-old Italian woman presented to our department with a three-week history of sudden, severe lower back pain…” Turned out she had fractured her pelvis. “We were enlightened as to the aetiology [origins] of the fracture by a nuclear medicine technician who spoke Italian, to whom the patient had explained the nature of her complaint. The severe pain commenced after a rather physical sexual encounter with her husband.”

Aside from the old saw about having a heart attack during sex (which isn’t really all that common) going aerobic in bed can cause other problems you’d never suspect.

“Six patients presented with a precipitous decrease in vision in one eye with no apparent predisposing factors. After obtaining a careful history, each patient revealed that he or she had been engaging in rigorous sexual activity…”

In these cases, the patients popped blood vessels in their eyes, perhaps from screaming during orgasm.

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