Aging after RALP

 

Just a query -- has anyone noticed substantial aging after their RALP?

It seems I have aged dramatically since my operation 15 months ago. Wonder if there is any corelation

between losing your prostate and aging?  Thanks

Not particularly, and I'm 68 and three years out. But I do think the 60s is when aging really starts to kick in and become noticeable, generally speaking.

Never heard that mentioned before. I am 6 years out, weigh 40 pounds less, still have some brown hair.

I think some guys sort of give up, and let themselves go to pot. Join a gym, lose a few pounds, stay active socially, and maybe you can change your self image of being old.

Much of it is perception.

Goodlife

As Phenom said " But I do think the 60s is when aging really starts to kick in and become noticeable, generally speaking."

I agree. The older you get, the faster you age. Unless you are a movie star! lol

While I can't blame it all on my RP I have to admit that the overall experience of being treated for prostate cancer has been a bit like being Rip Van Winkle. On June 14th 2012 at about 9:00 am I went to sleep a young-feeling, vigorous man, admittedly with a few years on him, and I woke up much, much older -- impotent, incontinent, irrelevant, sexless and superfluous. My initial debility recovering from surgery blends so seamlessly into the fatigue from the radiation and the effects of the androgen blockade that I have continuously felt twenty years older than I actually am since I woke up from surgery.

So, yeah, it aged me.

I noticed about a year before my diagnosis that I just did not feel like the same person. I lacked the energy I once had and became very tired. Since the diagnosis, the ADT and the surgery, I have felt overall pain throughout my body, can no longer sleep through the night and feel like my brain is turning to mush. I attribute those side effects to the hormone therapy. Perhaps a lot of what we feel can be mitigated by becoming active and taking a more personal interest in ourselves.

Buddy,

I was tired last night and reading over my comments this morning it occurs to me that they are, perhaps a bit grim, although altogether accurate.

Generally, with determination men can claw back some of their vigor from the beast. In my case it will probably require additional surgery to get back where I need to be to stop feeling like a geriatric patient. Hopefully I am done with the hormones, at least for now, and with a bit more testosterone and an implant and an artificial sphincter I hope to be a new man... Ok, not a new man. A refurbished man, cosmetically imperfect buy fully functional -- like an eBay laptop.

Actually, PDA, I found you 1st comments very descriptive of how I have felt. I'm not sure there is yet anything about how I look that looks much older compared to 8 months ago. But mentally, I woke up feeling vastly different in a couple of major ways. Wetting yourself combined with total impotence overnight. well, that just feels like a major advance in age, even if one is holding out hopes of a future improvement in both. Even if both of those improve a whole lot, it is hard to imagine me ever feeling again like I did at that youthful 65 years and 1 month, before I went to sleep and woke up very different.

I would also imagine that the potential attitude change that is likely to accompany such physical changes could lead to looking a lot older. I guess therefore we need to fight those attitude changes as best we can.