Firefighters Rescue Man With Penis Stuck In Dumbbell Ring

In what firefighters describe as a once-in-a-lifetime call, officials with the Costa Mesa Fire Department in California were summoned this week to a hospital in Newport Beach to save another man's penis.

The man in his fifties, who authorities refuse to identify, had apparently put his penis through the hole of a steel, ring-shaped dumbbell weight fastener, two or three days earlier.

But the device got stuck, and he couldn't remove it. The penis had blackened and swollen to five times its normal size.

In order to remove the ring, firefighters had to dodge sparks as they sawed through the metal ring the penis was stuck in.

"They said his comment was, 'This will make me the chief of my tribe,'" Battalion Chief Scott Broussard, who heard about the incident the next morning, tells the 'Daily Pilot' paper.

The man thought the weight from the steel object would make his penis longer, but authorities say what he did to it could have almost rendered it useless.

The steel collar-like fastener cut off circulation to the penis and, as a result, blood could not flow out of it. It then quickly swelled to the point that the man couldn't remove the ring.

Doctors told the man, who refused immediate treatment, that if he waited any longer to remove the fastener, the flesh in his penis would die.

Staff kept him in the hospital under a psychiatric hold and called the Fire Department to come remove the item because they didn't have the tools to do it.

The men constructed a watering system to keep the sparks from the sawing � which were flying half-way across the room � from injuring him as they cut through the inch-thick ring around his penis. The delicate procedure took two hours.

"They also slid a little piece of metal between the collar and his thing, so if it slipped past it wouldn't hit his thing," explains Broussard. "If we're cutting people out of some kind of building, or if we're cutting right up next to somebody's flesh and don't damage his flesh, then it's a good day."

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