Has ANY of you had both a RP and RT without having permanent ED?

I see the various charts and stats... how each has a high rate of ED, and that BOTH are the highest. Makes sense. But has ANYONE beat the odds? If not, they might as well be blunt and say, if you jhave RP and RT, you will forever had ED?

Yes.

The simple answer is to say that yes I could get erections after surgery without any difficulty (the first one showed up before the catheter even came out)
I was reluctant to "use" an erection till about 6 weeks after surgery, but could more or else get one when I wanted to in subsequent weeks. A strange change was that it is easier for my wife to get things going than for me!

As for using it, well I had a big problem with urine leaking out or squirting out during lovemaking, regardless of the position, technique etc, though I did not squirt urine at orgasm. After about six months that had more or less disappeared enough for it not to be a problem.

I then had to have SRT, but that has neither made things better or worse, other than it making me too tired to want to try to do anything much.

There is more to it than meets the eye though. I'm not satisfied simply because I do not having ED. A sexlife and a satisfying one is about more than being able to get an erection. For, while the nerves etc that give me erections still seem to be working, the nerves that give me orgasms are not. and without an orgasm sex is very inadequate/unsatisfying/disappointing - even depressing, yet before surgery everyone consulted said that even with a flaccid penis orgasms would not be a problem. (No joy as yet from then medical profession about why this is the case for me, nor about what might help)

It is also worth noting that my penis was about 20% shorter due to it having been pulled into me somewhat by the removal of the prostate. My prostate was about one and a half inches across and I guess I lost about one inch of my erection. (This loss of length was more of a problem with a flaccid penis though as there was often hardly enough to get hold of to aim with when I needed a pee)

I believe the thinking regarding RT as a follow-up treatment to surgery is that it will "freeze" your side-effects wherever they were before your RT started, so if say you have ED and a bit of incontinence before starting RT that is the BEST you can hope to have in the future after RT has finished.

However, there are more than a few folk here who have been able to pump, medicate or inject themselves out of ED, so it is not a case of giving up hope, any more than I am giving up trying to have an orgasm. (I'm trying to be positive; I feel like I'm trying to get drunk on alcohol-free booze, so even though I'm not getting tipsy, it's still quenching my thirst - and my wife does okay!)

Alf

yet another scenario:

i was JUST STARTING to get abilities back when i began my SRT, approx 16 months after the RP.  it CONTINUED to improve during the couple months of RT, but shortly after the completion of radiation, it went away again, and i'm back now (at 23 months post-op) to almost no function.  am taking Cialis daily, and pump does a good job.  i'm not sure exactly how this is going to work out (i know in some cases there may be continued healing of the nerves), but it looks like the radiation is going to rob me of the previous progress, and leave me with not much function.   don't want to be too pessimistic, but that's what it's looking like right now

right now, am THANKFUL that at 57, i think i have knocked down the bad stuff and bought myself several years down the road. the other "icing on the cake", i'll take it,if it wants to appear.

wishing you all the best

bob

Bob,

I also have a usable erection without any aids. As Alf mentioned, I was told that whatever function (both ED and continence) I had before IMRT that I would have that for the rest of my life. It's been 4 years since my RP and 3 1/2 years since my IMRT was completed and so far that has been the case. 1 pad a day and about an 80% erection without aids, my orgasms are just as intense as there were before that fateful day 4 years ago.

Ken

I'm like 80-90% without meds. Enough to get by. And it seems to have improved a little over the past year.