Hey Guys,

[newtoed]

I am 49 years old living in California. A little over a year ago I was diagnosed with rectal cancer and went through 10 months of treatment: radiation, chemo and surgery that left me with a colostomy bag. I started having sexual problems while I was on chemo. It made my skin so sensitive that I could not bare the touch of anything. My clothes, the shower, the sheet in the bed were a repelling feeling all the time and combined with being sick all the time sex became secondary. After the surgery I had to do more chemo that I just finished 4 months ago and I feel pretty good now.
Interestingly my ejaculate became clear during chemo even before surgery and I guess the chemo stopped my sperm production. After the surgery I had a couple of retrograde ejaculation that was weird and scary, but things turned normal and I have a smaller amount of clear ejaculate with less intense orgasm than before. (I still have my prostate, seminal vesicle, but probably radiation shot them down.)
As part of my recovery I cannot get hard from my wife's manual or oral stimulation at all, even though it feels good and even I can orgasm without an erection. I'm getting more and more full morning erections. I use oral meds with mixed results. What works best is masturbating before sex, slowly achieve full hardness, because I have urges to orgasm lot easier than before. Once I get fully hard after about 15 minutes I can go on with sex forever.
I believe my ED has both mental and physical causes related to the cancer treatment. I'm still not fully comfortable having the colostomy bag on my stomach which is awkward and a frustrating appliance to have. Even though my marriage is great general, cancer treatment kind of alienated us sexually and we have to rebuild that. Taking the pill, wait, stimulate ourselves separately then start sex feels very artificial to both of us compared to spontaneous sex like before. I can satisfy her orally that is great for both of us, but we miss the good old dick that used to make us come like crazy. But after a lot of frustration now we start seeing it as fun again even laugh about it. Thanks god we have a very fun relationship in so many ways. Started using sex toys and I will try pumping.
Let's hope for the best.
I learned so much from you guys already and I promise and hope that I can contribute to this forum as much as I can.
Les

[JDavid]

Les,
Welcome. You have really been through a lot and it's great that you are making a sexual recovery. Were your options related to the colostomy (BCIR, J-Pouch) explored with you? If not, and you are interested, j-pouch.org is a great resource.
Dave