Experience of others please

Both treatments could affect bottoms since one removes the prostate and the other turns it to mush - depends how central the gland is to your sexual response. Henry or one of the other gay members will hopefully post or message you. In terms of messiness, RT could be the riskier treatment since radiation damage to the bowel can lead to diarrhoea and / or mucus - not all men and not constant but it is a risk to be considered. I think a top might consider surgery to be the greater risk and bottoms would be more leaning towards surgery.

Is there a GBT prostate support group near you?

Paulo it would be great if you can give me more information of your experience. I too am thinking surgery might be my preferred option due to the side effects, I’m thinking of radiation giving problems to back passage and the bowel. I am bottom only so not so bothered about getting erections firm enough to penetrate myself but being able to still be penetrated is important to me.

Talking tonight to an old work colleague her father had radiation therapy and not had problems, so I’m left with mix feelings again.

I see the surgeon Monday and hopefully the radiation therapist later in the week to discuss more.

Rob

I had this surgery with DaVinci robot mainly because I would feel reassured to remove the tumor with the prostate. I know this is not always like that, but at least for me I considered I might had the feeling I could control more if the disease would develop. Also I rather wanted to deal with the side effects now than later, which is the case for surgery and not always for radiation (I mean I was told side effects after radiation therapy start to appear later).

As for what is worrying you more in your decision I am afraid I don’t have so many answers yet as I told you I had surgery only 2.5 months ago. My recovery has been ok though.

I am almost continent now. I had already days with zero leakages over the last 2 weeks. If you go via surgery route I advise you to start the Kegel exercises a few weeks before the surgery and get back with the exercises as soon as the catheter is removed. Something very important, at least for me it worked a lot, do the exercises while walking.

I don’t have a firm lasting erection yet, but I am sensing improvements. The erections last for a very short while and are very close to the orgasm. I am very disciplined in all I do, so always using a pump almost every day now. I am taking a 5 mg Cialis pill a day and a 200mg Avanafil pill once a week. And estimualting myself everyday when the partner is not there. I am patient and hope time will heal the ED too.

Very recently I have been questioning when to allow anal penetration again. After hearing / reading other guys experience (in the US there is a forum like this for gay people, in Portugal I don’t find any and here in UK you are the first I am talking to) I concluded I could start anal penetration after 3 months of the surgery. There are people who say we should allow the body to heal a longer period, but the majority said 3 months would be enough. We just needed to be careful and have a partner that would know your situation and do it carefully. If we had any pain, we needed to stop and allow longer time to heal. I also found the courage to ask my doctor and this week he told me that I could start my regular sex life. So I did. Yesterday it happened and I tell you it was good, no pain and it was pleasurable as before. I can tell you more in a private email chat if you want. For more information I also need to experience as time goes by as all is new to me too.

My anxiety now is actually more related with the PSA test I will be doing early July.

All the best to you,

Paulo