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Subject:   Re: Facts (Numbers) about post robotic prostatectomy Re continence & potency
Name:   Ted
Date Posted:   May 5, 08 - 10:05 AM
Email:   tedcoxhead@yahoo.co.uk
Message:   I don't know from what you wrote how threatening your cancer is. I guess you have looked at all the mentor posts here as part of your evaluation of which procedure (including watchful waiting in all its varieties) may be best for you.

In my case after a robotic, continence was perfect after 4 months (even sneezing and hearty laughter after too many drinks doesn't always produce a quick squirt). Our urinary structure after surgery becomes more like our wive's and girlfriend's, but my uro told me that we usually hold our water better than they do. (That's why girls sometimes say they pee themselves laughing).

As for ED, that depends on many more variables. I am now 8 months since surgery and only have what the uro delicately calls "tumescence", i.e. unstuffable swelling in proper English. I have tried the Big Three pills which don't improve things for me yet, but do give me a bastard of a headache.

However I can assure you that you learn to cope and that as long as you and your partner are both willing there is still plenty of good sex life to be had. It's just different, that's all.

This is the problem with prostate cancer, isn't it? If you have a broken leg, or even a heart attack, after they put you back together you will work in roughly the same way as did before. You also know from the nature of those conditions that you cannot just go on with life without knowing you have them!

But with prostate cancer many of us didn't even know we had it; we felt no different with it and when it is taken out we feel no improvement, only the downsides. (It's a bit like having new tyres on the car - you need them but don't really notice a positive improvement afterwards. In fact it's more like having the new tyres which improve your safety but now you have a wheel wobble!)

As I said I don't know how bad your diagnosis is. But lots of people here would advise you to look at that carefully and weigh all your options. Medical advances have made it very easy to diagnose prostate cancer but generally no easier to say whether yours will ever kill you.

Robotic is no magic cure. I had a world leading authority do mine, an author of over 50 books and papers, yet due to scar tissue from a previous TURP he failed to remove the whole prostate. So, in a way I'm doing the very watchful waiting now, having had major surgery, that I could have been doing all along.There is such a thing as insignificant cancer and one opinion I have consulted says that looking at my pre-op and post-op pathology, I may be the guy that had just that.

So think long and hard and take your time. If you decide on treatment then, as Bill says, forget all these doubts about what you might be losing or changing. You will have decided to do your best to get that cancer out of your body and you will live with the inevitable changes that brings about. After all, to be blunt, if your diagnosis is bad enough and/or if your FEARS of it are bad enough, your body and mind are going to go through all these changes anyway. And IF the disease is really bad enough you would progress to all the urinary and sexual side effects you now dread - and of course possibly a rather worse outcome.

Ted form England
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