The Side Effects? Well, There Is One...
By TARA PARKER-POPE
NYT
Tara Parker-Pope is the editor of The New York Times’s Well blog.
WHEN Paul Nelson of New Canaan, Conn., learned he had prostate cancer at the age of 46, he opted for robotic prostatectomy with a famous New York surgeon who played down worries of erectile dysfunction.
“I had surgery by a doctor who said 98 percent of my patients are perfectly fine,” said Mr. Nelson, now 51. “Of course, I wasn’t perfectly fine.”
The reality for many of the 240,000 men in the United States in whom prostate cancer is diagnosed each year is not all that rosy, at least when it comes to their intimate lives. After surgery and radiation treatments, many men quickly discover that sex will never be normal again. Sensations change. Many men can no longer achieve erections without pumps or pills. For some, the ability to have sex goes away entirely.
Yet, for years, men facing prostate cancer surgery have been reassured by their doctors, who could cite studies in prominent medical journals, that their sex lives would be just fine after treatment. Doctors would often boast of sexual recovery rates in excess of 90 percent, but failed to disclose that those numbers applied to a select group of patients rather than to most men who walked in the door.
(More here.)
NYT
Tara Parker-Pope is the editor of The New York Times’s Well blog.
WHEN Paul Nelson of New Canaan, Conn., learned he had prostate cancer at the age of 46, he opted for robotic prostatectomy with a famous New York surgeon who played down worries of erectile dysfunction.
“I had surgery by a doctor who said 98 percent of my patients are perfectly fine,” said Mr. Nelson, now 51. “Of course, I wasn’t perfectly fine.”
The reality for many of the 240,000 men in the United States in whom prostate cancer is diagnosed each year is not all that rosy, at least when it comes to their intimate lives. After surgery and radiation treatments, many men quickly discover that sex will never be normal again. Sensations change. Many men can no longer achieve erections without pumps or pills. For some, the ability to have sex goes away entirely.
Yet, for years, men facing prostate cancer surgery have been reassured by their doctors, who could cite studies in prominent medical journals, that their sex lives would be just fine after treatment. Doctors would often boast of sexual recovery rates in excess of 90 percent, but failed to disclose that those numbers applied to a select group of patients rather than to most men who walked in the door.
(More here.)
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