Health3 min(s) read
Published 15:45 21 Apr 2026 GMT
A man has revealed the "wake-up call" sign he noticed before needing to amputate four inches of his penis.
Steven 'Stumpy' Hamill opened up about his traumatic experience with penile cancer, a rare, slow-growing cancer, usually affecting men over 50, in an emotional interview on This Morning.
Hamill first noticed something was wrong when he experienced swelling in his genital area.
"As a 26-year-old man, it was very, um... Hmm, what's this?" he said. "So I did what every guy would probably do, ignore it, hope it goes away itself, and then we’ll see what happens."
But it wasn’t until he experienced a serious bleed that he knew something was terribly wrong.
"After going to the toilet, I was making a cup of tea when I felt something wet," Hamill explained. "All over the kitchen cupboards, the floor, and my feet was scarlet. That's when I thought, 'Do you know what? I need to go and get this checked.'"
At that point, he hadn’t considered penile cancer as a possibility, as he had never heard of it before.
Hamill visited the hospital and was misdiagnosed with balanitis, an inflammation of the penis, and was prescribed steroid cream.
After seeing no improvement in two weeks, his symptoms grew worse. "I was in so much pain. It felt like someone was poking a needle into the end of my penis," he shared. He also described a horrific smell, which he referred to as "death," that seemed to follow him everywhere.
Despite the excruciating pain Hamill was experiencing, his doctor initially dismissed the possibility of cancer, telling him that it "couldn't be cancer" due to his age.
But after further investigation, they were proven wrong - he was diagnosed with penile cancer, and the aggressive nature of the disease required drastic measures.
Steven’s condition deteriorated quickly. He was rushed to the A&E and later to a specialist unit at Manchester's Christie NHS Foundation Trust.
There, he underwent a circumcision, followed by the amputation of half of his penis.
"The only way I can describe it to you, imagine a banana and you bite the underneath of it, so it was like a big crater in it - that’s what happened to me," he explained. "The cancer just ate away, and that’s what the bleed was, that’s what the smell was."
Doctors informed him that the next steps were crucial: "They said, 'You’ve got two days, go and enjoy yourself for two days because your life is going to change dramatically.'"
The urgency was due to the aggressive nature of the cancer, and at one point, even the surgeons feared for Steven’s life.
Seven years later, the man is cancer-free and now a proud father to a four-year-old boy. He now uses his condition to courageously raise awareness about penile cancer.
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