TDub,
Your post is facinating to me because it is so different from my own
experience. I am not intending any value judgement. I was 50 when I got
the bad news. I was so upset about the potential loss of my sex life
that I was considering gun stores along with the more standard options.
I learned to do the injections pre-op so I would be ready afterwards. I
had ,and still have a very full life,but for a while there, anxiety
over my sex life eclipsed everything else. Now, I hope I live a long
time if life stays good like it is now.
Steve U

Hello "T dub"

Sexuality is a part of life whether married or not.
Sexuality is a part of life regardless of Prostate Cancer Surgery.
Yes, men at all ages, and especially with wife, love sex.
Sex, and air, and working, and washing dishes, and listening to music, and
watching tv, and golfing, and fishing,  and paying attention to the kids
that have been born.
Are all reality.....
Taxes are real...
.I counted on my fingures and toes how much I use those.......All day long.
I counted how many times I use my ears and eyes....all day long.
I went poo and pee.....many times.
Seems like our body is full of many things.
I read books,
Work hard
The importance of sex...It is a part of life.
Especially if you have a wonderful wife........
Yes we are compomised, but we move ahead......

Realize that sex is just as important as all the above.

This is LATE; I hope the trash hasn't been picked up yet. I just discovered
it in my Drafts folder from last month. Yeah, it's long, but nobody's making
you read it. I hope some find it worth reading, because most of us will have
to face it.

Your points are valid for more people than you may think. I LOVE life, and
am overJOYED to get this cancer research out of the way for now and get on
with 10-15 far more vital, vigorous, important, and fun activities competing
for my time. My life has been and still is excellent, but I STILL HEAR YA,
Tdub. It's not DEATH that sucks, it's DYING in confused agony for both
patient and family. We can't avoid the former, but we sure can avoid the
latter. Heck, beyond our first PCA treatment, our ultimate PC fate is
largely out of our hands, so we may as well control whatever aspects of our
lives that we can. When it's down to only one thing left under my control --  
how I die -- I plan to exercise THAT control, too, with the blessing of my
wife. Any religion that dictates that we must endure prolonged, pointless
suffering to appease its god is of no interest to me. The pope had an
example to set, and lived up to his reputation. No one's watching me,
though, and I'd FAR rather scarf down lemon meringue pie than suck lemons.

Speaking of which . . . my plan, and it will be in my living will as a
contract clause . . . is to do just the opposite of your "as long as it
still appeals to me: eat myself into the grave. Besides giving criteria for
keeping me alive vs letting me die under various circumstances, I WILL
include explicit instructions for my death bed food -- beginning the day
they say I'm imminently and unavoidably terminal. No way the hospital is
catering my last few weeks' food; they're gonna get paid to wheel me into
every pizza parlor, buffet, B&R, pastry shop, Outback Steakhouse, etc. in
the county while I can still hobble or roll in there, and when I can no
longer get out of bed those places will get paid to cater my hospital meals
inhouse. I hope I still enjoy eating enough to gain 50 pounds, 100
cholesterol points, and 200 triglyceride points, in my last two months, and
to publish this living will so other folks can see an alternative way to die
of disease. Then when even that grows impossible because I'm no longer able
to eat, converse and/or think, it's time to pull the tubes and coast. I
wanna go out looking like Jabba the Kennedy by choice, not like an anorexic
marathon runner by fate.

Speaking of which, it's my understanding SO FAR that your "may just stop
eating and let myself wither away and die over the period of a month or two"
is an excruciating way to go, that total cessation of food and water is just
the opposite, a very peaceful way to go. i.e., We must proceed from
turkey'n'stuffing'n'gravy to cold turkey on sustenance rather than dawdle on
leftovers for a prolonged period of time.

My aunt's last obvious, deliberate, conscious demand was unmistakable: she
pointed to a hospital meal she couldn't eat (after a decade of throat
cancer), shook her head, looked her beloved sister in the eye, and drew her
finger across her throat. The nurse witnessed that and the hospital accepted
it as her desire to cease all nourishment and move on.

I.P.