On January 6th of last year -- a bit more than 19 months ago -- I posted an item entitled
Proxac Giveth and Prozac Taketh Away in which I reported that six months into my two years of androgen deprivation therapy I had found it necessary to add an anti-depressant to my daily fist-full-o'pills, and that fluoxitine (Prozac) had helped with the depression but had ended my ability to reach climax through self-abuse, an ability which had represented the last remaining shred of my sex life. (Difficult or missing orgasm is a fairly common side effect of that class of antidepressant.) At that time I predicted that the next two years would be long ones, and they have been.
I am now about
six weeks past the official end of my hormone therapy and about
four weeks since I weaned myself off of the Prozac. If my recovery from two years of hormone therapy is typical I will remain hypogonadial for several more months (I'm hoping for three months but it could be six or nine or never, I'll just have to see.)
I have separately noted that I am starting to notice the ladies again. Although my oncologist and I did switch for the last three months to a different drug that will, hopefully, wear off faster, it is probably too early for my testosterone to have risen to a level that would support a returning libido so my recent interest in the opposite sex is probably just a placebo effect. But I'll take it.
What is a firmer data point is that, as of today, I have regained my ability to reach orgasm via doggedly determined self-abuse. Again, I doubt I have enough testosterone yet to make much difference so, just as I blamed the Prozac for the loss of that ability, I will credit its recovery to stopping the Prozac.
I usually lard my comments with puns but they don't seem to be working out for me here. There is, for instance, the "Green Shoots" in the title. But, of course, I no longer "shoot". As for the "firmer data point" in the previous paragraph... well... [ *heavy sigh* ]