Ever hear the one about the farmer who got his penis mangled in a hay bailer, then had doctors build him a brand-new penis using parts of his forearm?

No? Then you don’t hang out with Brian Steixner, M.D., Director of the Institute of Men’s Health at Jersey Urology Group in Atlantic City. Dr. Steixner often regales his buddies with insane tales from his practice, where he has seen and treated every gruesome penis problem in the book.

“It’s comical, the stuff that comes in my office,” Dr. Steixner says. Spend a half hour on the phone with the urologist and you’ll hear so many stories of dick destruction (and reconstruction) that you can’t help but clutch your own junk in fear of what could happen to it.

Nevertheless, Dr. Steixner’s anecdotes must be shared. Here are the five grisliest cases that have ever come across his operating table. Yes, you’ll cringe, but you’ll also learn an important lesson or two—namely, to be a little more careful around hay bailers.

1. Lord of the Cock Rings

Dr. Steixner looks back fondly on the fellow who came to him from a comic convention in Atlantic City. The 19-year-old was dressed in full Lord of the Ringsgarb, and had apparently taken his love for Tolkien a little too far. Dr. Steixner says the patient had placed the toy ring from a LOTR board game on his penis.

“So I get called to the ER, and I’m looking at this Gandalf guy who doesn’t have pants on, and he’s got the ring stuck around the base of his penis,” says Dr. Steixner. The problem: “The convention had taken place 4 days ago!”

By that point, all of the skin on the patient’s dong had died, and the would-be wizard was too embarrassed to see a doc right away. “If you leave a penis ring on for a prolonged period of time, eventually blood will begin to accumulate in the penis beyond where the ring is,” Dr. Steixner explains. “The ring constricts the outflow of blood. Your penis swells and swells, and with no blood able to get out, the skin dies.”

It’s Dr. Steixner’s job to save wounded weiners, so the patient made it out in one piece. “But it took an hour for us to cut through the ring,” Dr. Steixner says. “When we finally got it off, it shot across the room, and I yelled, ‘save the ring!’”

Cock rings can be a great tool for enhancing your pleasure—see which ones land on our list of The Best Sex Toys for Men—but you can’t leave them on for very long.

“Don’t use a cock ring for more than an hour,” Dr. Steixner advises. “If you put anything around your penis, you have to remove it pretty quickly after you’re done using it.”

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