![]() ![]() My fears were confirmed in subsequent conversations with a radiation oncologist and urologist. My body had already been mutilated by prostate surgery and radiation, and my sex drive was only beginning, over the previous three years, to return to normal. Images of a special intimacy with my wife that was to be no more. Images of a premature death, a death in my early forties, a death that would prevent me from watching my children grow into adolescence and adulthood. Is there, indeed, a male equivalent for getting spayed? Our family cat and I: We may have more in common than I had previously thought, now with castration looming on the horizon. A thought: If women can get artificial breasts, I wondered, can men get artificial testicles to reduce self-consciousness in locker rooms? Horrid images, of chemical castration or, worse yet, of actual castration to halt the growth of the cancer, flooded my consciousness. Now, I was being told that, although I was feeling fine, the substance had somehow reappeared, meaning that there must be a recurrence of cancer somewhere in my body. Since my prostate had been surgically removed and the area treated with localized radiation more than five years earlier, all traces of a substance produced only in the membranes of prostate and specific cancer cells had literally disappeared. My urologist's secretary had just given me the results of a routine follow-up test for prostate cancer. ![]()
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