I just want to thank you guys for welcoming me to the website and chat room. I have been looking for something like this for over 8 years. I want to give a little background on myself to all the other members. I am age 59 and was diagnosed in January 2000 and had open incision nerve sparing radical prostatectomy on Jan. 31, 2000. From that point until last week when I found this website chat room I have just been winging it alone. No one seemed to want to know anything about anything, I think my friends felt any details could be quickly embarrassing so they didn’t want to broach the subject other than just asking how I was doing but you could tell they didn’t really want to know “details“.
I first became concerned in mid 1999 when my PSA came back as 4, the Dr. did biopsy and found nothing. PSA kept climbing , had 3 more in-office biopsies showing nothing.PSA had climbed to 8 Dr. said we were going to do another but this one under anesthesia in the hospital. Did that one and it too showed nothing but Dr. said he was going to send the sample to a specialized lab over in Los Angeles and it came back positive. Scheduled surgery 2 weeks later but not much was said about the after effects of the surgery. I had one meeting with the Dr. to discuss any questions I had right before surgery and the one thing that stands out in my mind that was a portent of things to come was the Dr. said of himself “ I can’t image what it would be like to have and ejaculation without an erection” . We had hardly discussed that possibility. Surgery went fine, catheter out in 2 weeks, some leakage for a few days but that cleared up quickly. (PSA now after 8 ½ years is undetectable). First ejaculation about 5 weeks after surgery and I found out what it was like to have an ejaculation without and erection. It was really weird the first time and especially with dry ejaculation. I have had a rough time with ED and many days of really being down about it. Went back to Dr. several times regarding ED and got very little help or encouragement. He gave me a pump and some Viagra but back then they didn’t go into rehab therapy with pump and medication. I have really struggled with this and eventually was able to have a partial erection at time of orgasm but never any spontaneous erections or night erections. I just kind of rocked along and became used to the way things were now and didn’t use pump or take pills at all. I called the Dr. earlier this week and told him I was going to start taking a more proactive approach to this ED situation. He gave me samples of Viagra 50Mg and I took one two days ago and had the hardest erection I have ever had since the surgery over 8 years ago, it equaled or exceeded any pre surgery erection I ever had. It was wonderful and did a lot for me mentally. I called the Dr. and told him and he said to try 25 Mg. (just cut tablet in half) and try that and see what the result is. I did that yesterday and again had a good erection but not quite the quality of the one before when I took the 50 Mg. I know I have gone on way too long on this background info but one ironic note in all this. I was circumcised really short when I was a child and before surgery when I had a full hard erection the skin was pulled a little uncomfortably tight but when I had the prostate surgery that took care of that situation but now with taking some medication and with the return of fairly normal erections maybe I will have that little problem again but I don’t care.
Once again thank you guys for this forum where you can speak frankly about you situation and feeling, it is a God send.
RLF