Thursday, November 02, 2006
The Fear
Why? Well, a lot of reasons. For starters, 1 in 9 men get it. Two, the side effects of the treatment -- aka incontinence and impotency. Those words literally seem like a death sentence to me ... almost too horrible to even think about.
On nbcnews.com they have a series of articles by a 49 year old guy with prostate cancer. Of course I read them all immediately -- I think devoured them is the better way to put it. The whole time my palms were sweaty and I could feel that my hands were shaking.
Just as having breasts are an important part of being a woman, having a working johnson is important to being a man. The idea of going through life wearing depends and not being able to get an erection puts a profound fear in me. The author has a good line -- there's a fine line between humility and humiliation. That's a goddamn awesome observation. Humiliation doesn't have to be public. In fact, I bet most humiliation takes place in our own heads.
Luckily for the author, his impotence seems to be minor, probably even temporary. His description of his first experiment with viagra would be hilarious if it wasn't so terrifying:
The nerves that control my ability to have an erection were not permanently harmed during my operation. But those nerves ordinarily rest against the prostate gland itself. So the trauma of having the little fellow ripped from beneath them has left the nerves unable to direct the party games for now.
My doctor says there’s a 75 percent chance that the nerves will be up to their old tricks, unassisted, within a year. In the meantime, it’s important to sport some wood every now and then to keep the blood flowing and avoid the simply awful-sounding complication of penile atrophy.
So I’ve been given a prescription for Viagra and told to start with half a 100 milligram pill. If the drug doesn’t work, I’m advised, we can go on to penis pumps, injections and all the way to Defcon 1, a penile implant. Oh goodie!
As I shake the football-shaped pill from the bottle and awkwardly cut it in two on my kitchen counter, a wave of weird excitement seizes me, like I’ve been caught somewhere between racing up to my room to try out the new Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring and sneaking my first beer.
The great male irony
I down the half-tablet with a gulp of water and reflect on a great male irony. In our younger days, we have no control whatsoever over when and where we go boing and often wish we had a switch to just turn the damn thing off. When we get older, the opposite may be true. How many of us prayed all through high school for class not to end so we wouldn’t be forced into the halls with the dreaded pants tent? And now, after we turn 45 or 50, how many of us pray that there’s still some life left in the old tent pole?
Until I began this “research,” I had some big misconceptions about how Viagra and similar drugs work. Hilariously, I actually thought that a man popped the pill and then … schwing! The implications of that made me giggle as I thought of such men getting into car accidents on the way to the massage parlor and playing pranks on each other at the nudist resort. Hey, the commercials even warn about “erections lasting longer than four hours.”
Well guys, no such luck. These drugs don’t contribute to sexual desire or arousal any more than a plate of oysters does. Viagra’s label notes clearly that it “has no effect in the absence of sexual stimulation.”
In the midst of such reflections and label-reading, I suddenly notice that I’m feeling odd. Nothing unpleasant, really, just slightly light-headed, as if I’ve had a cocktail or two. But when I go into the bathroom, I am startled by the intensity of the lights above the mirror. Both phenomena, I read later, are common side effects of Viagra.
The Test
After an hour, when the medication is supposed to be at peak effect, I nervously decide that it’s time for The Test. Well, anything for science and journalism. Soooo, some appropriate measures are taken. Yep, just use your imagination. And you should stop reading right here if you’re going to get all worked up about a 49-year-old cancer patient getting, well, all worked up.
But the bottom line is ... YOWZAH!!!! This stuff works. And we are not talking a tepid Ballpark Frank result. No sir! We are talking a fine result, a wonderful result, a glorious result, a result that meets rigid specifications, a result that you could, in fact, hang laundry on.
Of course, there's a lot more to sex than a willing willie. When your prostate gland is removed, your ability to produce semen goes with it. And while "dry" orgasms are pleasurable, they're definitely different than what nature intended.
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