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Any of the conventional treatments for prostate cancer has a risk of resulting in erectile dysfunction. Many men make a choice of treatment based on what they perceive as the minimization of this risk, hoping that the treatment will be successful; many women have a slightly different focus – they would rather choose the treatment they think has the best chance of dealing with the disease and hope that their man will recover his erectile function.
Many men do regain most of their original function, sometimes with the aid of drugs, injections or mechanical devices, but regrettably not all do so. Susan Candrell and Stephan Wilkinson are authors and a husband and wife couple who faced this issue and wrote of their experiences in an amusing but insightful way.
After I accepted the fact that I had prostate cancer, my primary goal was to get rid of it. I accepted the possibility that I would never get an erection again. My life was more important. Several months after the surgery, I started to get the beginnings of an erection with Levitra. The only problem was the accompanying headache and stuffiness. It didn't seem like a good trade-off. But, it is still possible to have an orgasm without an erection or a prostate, so things aren't that bad. Soon after that I found out that my problems weren't over: I needed radiation to finish the job. That's over but I've almost given up on getting erections again. When the ADT wears off I'll see how things go but I'm not counting on it. At least I'm alive.
