Man with dementia hospitalized after strangling penis with rubber bands

An Illinois man suffering from dementia was hospitalized after binding his genitals with rubber bands until his penis began to rot.

“Strangulation cases like this are thankfully rare,” Dr. Fardod O’Kelly, a urological surgeon at Beacon Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, told the Daily Mail of the grisly case, which was reported in the medical journal Urology Case Reports. The 81-year-old male had initially reported to the hospital after suffering from diabetic ketoacidosis — a potentially deadly reaction to low levels of insulin stemming from his uncontrollable diabetes. It was there that the Chicago native’s wife revealed that he’d wrapped his scrotum in rubber bands and refused to remove them for three days.