Article for RP Patients to read

[Reggieman]

I found an article that is most interesting that I want to share with RP patients. I wish I had read it before I had surgery as I received no real counseling regarding the after effects of the surgery and how couples should be counseled. Even now after all the reading I've done I still learned some things from this article. I hope this is helpful to others.

Psychosocial perspectives on sexual recovery after prostate cancer treatment

http://www.nature.com/nrurol/journal/v1 ... move#ref48

[alibaba]

Wow, the doctor who makes his living lopping out the parts is encouraged to tell the patient a realistic view that things are going to suck and not improve much no matter what you do. Every doctor I contacted told me that sexual recovery happens within 6 months to 2 years in 80% yet I have never met a man that had a prostatectomy that has recovered. Most including me either do or at some point wish they still had the cancer rather than the side effects of treatment that they were not aware of nor expected. I just read this article to my wife. Still waiting on her to quit yelling about what doctors tell you to expect and what you really get.

[williamb]

Alibaba,

Wow, the doctor who makes his living lopping out the parts is encouraged to tell the patient a realistic view that things are going to suck and not improve much no matter what you do. Every doctor I contacted told me that sexual recovery happens within 6 months to 2 year

I agree with you, Totally. I went into this believing that in a few months everything would be more or less back to "my old normal" . Well we all know that this is BS to some degree for all of us.
I find it very dis-heartening that the RP Surgeons do not inform us of the results of saving our lives from prostate cancer. My surgeon in Houston did a very good job in getting all of the cancer, even though it was outside the prostate, even was able to spare the nerves. He said one nerve was untouched and the second was scraped on a small amount. We for all of the good that did he may as well took them out also. I was ignorant of what to expect and therefore had unreal expectations and that has caused me a lot of emotional and marriage issues.
I was not told what to expect, what options I had or the success of the different ED treatments. Its like we are ignorant and they are embarrassed to talk about our non-functioning dick and how to make it function again.
This fact needlessly made my journey much harder on my family. Plus the fact that I had a less than successful 1st implant and a doctor that would not admit that it was less than "perfect". My recent revision has solved some of the original implant issues though.
Dave

[Andy425]

I agree 1001% with the posters above. A top urologist in the area did my RP but did NOT mention much at all about the following points. FWIW, 4.5 years out my PSA is .04 so I'm not much worried about recurring cancer.

Here are the real world choices we have when faced with PC treatment, that the doctors don't really want to talk about:

-- Do nothing, and probably die a slow lingering death in some number of years -- depending on your specific case.

-- Be treated and probably cured of cancer, but expect to be functionally impotent for life, and the real possibility of having urine leakage problems -- to some degree -- for life.

If YOU specifically end up with either problem, and to what degree, is impossible to predict ahead of time.

FWIW: If you're single and without a S/O when this all happens, expect your life to change radically on the downside -- much more so than a man who is in a stable, long-term relationship.
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EDIT: Ha, I just read the article, an hour after my above post.

Not surprisingly, there was NO MENTION of going through this as a single man, and all the additional up-front problems we have that married men do not face.