Come 2am I needed to pee really bad, and none of the doctors spoke English. This one doctor kept coming in and I was like, “I fucked up, get a catheter, get the doctor…urethra, trauma” all of this, and he just said, “good night” in French, turned the light off and left. I was like “what?” so I called for the doctor again and he did the same thing, he thought I was some crazy British tourist…

So I get up, in my nightie, and there’s blood everywhere, all over my nightie, like I’d pissed myself with blood, drip in my arm, still dirty from skating, and I’m walking around the hospital. I went down fifteen floors trying to find someone to help me, to call the doctor. I was trying to use all the same words they’d used, like ‘urethra’, ‘trauma’, all of this, and no one could help me. I went back to the room, which was a shared room with an old man, an 80-year-old man who I think had the same thing, and I was like, “right, I’m going to go to the toilet, going to pee, and it’s not going to be so bad”. So I get there and I’m like “here I go”, and for the first second and a half nothing happened but I could feel it flowing, then I felt it building up, then a massive, massive blood clot, like the size of a golfball with a little string on the end, flew out of my dick and splattered on the wall of the hospital, and then it flowed, and it was red blood mixed with pee, and the same intense pain again.

I was screaming, literally screaming, “Help me! Somebody help me!” I couldn’t take it. I was sat on the toilet, shaking, literally about to pass out, I really thought I was going to pass out, and the nurse came back and saw this happening, saw the blood all over the floor, all over the wall, and he was like ‘ahhh…’ as if he finally understood.

The nurse came that night and put the pipe in, and when they put the pipe in there was no numbing cream or anything. You can get morphine but I didn’t really want morphine; five days on that and I’ll be tweaking out. So the nurse gets your dick, gets the pipe, and just pushes. She just pushes until it gets to your bladder wall, then they tell you to wiggle your feet. You know when you need to pee and you jump up and down? It’s because your moving your ankles and that movement opens up your bladder a little bit. So you wiggle your feet and they ram the pipe in, they inflate this thing inside to stop it coming out, a ‘knuckle’ it’s called, then that’s it; it just flows. There’s no pain then at least because the cut isn’t being touched by anything.

This was just day one, (laughs).

No…

Yep. So when she’s putting the pipe in, it’s Christian who is holding it. I’m laying there in so much pain thinking, “what the fuck is going on? My team manager is holding my dick (laughing), I’m covered in blood, I’m struggling to stay awake because I’m so tired and I’m not sure this nurse knows what she’s doing”.

So she’s got the pipe in half way and it gets stuck, she can’t push any further, and it’s because she’s got this compression on my gooch. So she had to take the pipe back out, cut this compression off which has now left scars on my groin where they ripped it off, it’s stretched my skin…they used the wrong tape for sure. Then they managed to get this medium pipe in.

Day three started the same as day two – I go to bed, wake up and there was blood everywhere. Now I had weird blood clots wrapped around the pipe where the blood had come out of my dick and around the pipe. After they saw this they were like, “right we’re going to take you to surgery, we’re going to go inside your dick with a camera and shock the cut with electrodes until it stops bleeding”. They were going to burn the cut closed.

They were going to cauterize it?

Yep, cauterize it. They said, “your dick muscle isn’t that far away from the cut so it might work, it might not, the muscle might never be as strong…we’ll just have to see”. But if I didn’t stop bleeding I was going to die, basically.

How much blood did you end up losing in total?

I think in pints, I’m meant to have 13.1 if I’m healthy, and I had 7.2 before the bleeding stopped. I nearly lost half of my blood. If I went below 7, I’d have been dead; my heart wouldn’t have had anything to really pump.

So they were going to take me to surgery. By this point my team manager wasn’t there because visiting hours weren’t in action, so I had to just say yes and see what happened. I was lying on the surgery table like, “please don’t fuck this up, look after me guys”.

I woke up after the surgery and I’d had the biggest pipe you could possibly have…the ‘max pipe’ (laughs), XL…this thing was bigger than a pen, not quite a marker but bigger than a biro. They said, “we didn’t have to cauterize the cut. The cut you had was only 5mm, it was tiny”.

The reason there was so much blood was because when I peed at the skate spot and the hospital before getting the first pipe, it all backfired into my bladder. When they went in they saw the cut and could see signs of healing, they went into the bladder and there was a massive blood clot in there. They cleaned it all out as much as they could, to the point where I wasn’t going to die at least (laughs), and they were like, “that was the reason you kept bleeding, you didn’t even need the biggest pipe in there” but they left it in anyway because it was better for me to have apparently.

How long did they keep you in hospital for after the surgery? You weren’t realised on the spot I’m guessing…

They kept me in for two days but I had the pipe for another week after that, and I stayed with my team manager Christian at his brothers’ house.

You obviously don’t pee with the catheter in, it just drains out and you flick the valve to empty the bag. I could empty the bag outside and that was fine, in a bush or something, but if I saw a toilet, my brain would tell me I needed to pee and my bladder would start to push, and the holes are too small in the catheter so you’re gushing and you have these contractions as if you’re pregnant, the doctor said.

I couldn’t look at a toilet for a week; I had to forget about it.

I had the pipe for a week then they whipped it out and now my dick works fine (laughs). Let me make that clear to all the ladies out there, too – it’s better than ever; if anything it’s stronger, (laughs).

Seriously though, it’s perfect, it’s back to normal, there are no scars…the only difference is I now piss like a horse (laughs). My pipe is so straight it’s a joke.

Leon: Is it the same when you’re, you know, with a girl? Do you stick them to the ceiling?

When I got the pipe out that was one of the first things I did. I was actually pretty stoked with myself; I’m not going to lie, like, “damn!”

One morning when the pipe was in I got ‘morning wood’, and it was the worst thing I’ve ever felt. There was so much pain. The valve on the pipe isn’t designed for you to get a boner, so from the end of your bellend to the valve isn’t that big, so when you’re erect, the valve is getting pushed into your urethra.

I was screaming, splashing water on my dick trying to get it go away…that was gnarly, getting a boner with the pipe wasn’t that good. But I got paranoid so I looked it up, and it says you can still have sex whilst you’ve got these pipes in. You can bend it over and put a condom on, and then you can just go for it, (laughs). That’s what the NHS fucking say!

How long was it before you could get back to skating then? I assume everything is fine again now as you’ve been skating loads, we just came back from Shop Riot in Madrid too and you weren’t holding back there.

I couldn’t skate for a month after. They were like, “even if you fart too hard you can tense up rip the cut open, and if you do that it’s another pipe, more surgery and less chance of your dick ever working again.”

I definitely got off really lucky, but it was hell. I heard stories off people on Instagram, had people direct messaging me, and they were like, “I feel your pain, I’ve had this for nine months now”. Nine months!

Anyway, that was my horrific dick story…told to you in The Little Driver, (laughs).

Harry Lintell Trauma