New Member Intro & Question

Thanks for the replies.  The answers were mostly what I expected, everything I had read pointed to after 12 - 18 months what you see is what you get.  The Myrbetric is having an effect, in that it delays the onset of ”the urge” to later in my daily walk and I think the total number of times I void per day are reduced.  Initial observation indicate it doesn’t seem to affect the total quantity of leakage while walking.  I’ll be doing the voiding diary later this week to quantify these anecdotal observations.

MK1965.  I don’t have much good news regarding ED, if the 1965 is your birth year I understand your concern, you are considerably younger than me.  To directly answer your question, since surgery I have had 1 fully functional unprompted erection, the others have been less hard and obviously not very useful. Prior to surgery I had zero problems.  The good news for me is that the fully functional erection was most recently, so perhaps some healing is still taking place.  My surgery was only nerve sparing on one side, so I was not hopeful for erectile function.  My Dr had me using one of the pumps and taking daily 20 mg Sildenafil starting 3 mo post surgery.  I was supposed to take 5 Sildenafil (100 mg) once a week and see if they produced an erection.  Five produced a massive headache and not much else and I eventually gave up on using Sildenafil daily after 9 months.  I also gave up on using the pump daily after a year.  Interestingly the best erection occurred after I stopped worrying, not while I was doing all the pill taking and pumping.

It is my understanding that two sets of nerves are involved in obtaining an erection.  The nerve bundles surrounding the prostate are the ones that control the initial blood flow (the tingly feeling at the start of arousal) to start the erection process.  However there are other nerves within the lower abdomen that are involved in restricting the blood flow out of the penis.  These two nerves are located somewhat randomly and not symmetrically on either side of the lower abdomen.  In other words they’re hard to find and just because they can be found in one person doesn’t mean they’ll be in the same place in another person.  Nerve cells that are stretched more than 15% of their length are just as damaged as those that are cut with a scalpel.  I could see as the diseased prostate (mine was 3.5 cm x 2.5 cm x 2 cm according to the post surgery pathology report - that’s a lot bigger than a “wall nut size healthy prostate LOL) is pulled up and out of your abdomen if it caught on the nerves it could pull on the pfibers and stretch them.  I only bring this up because of research I did regarding the state of my erections.  It seemed to me that I had no shortage of the initial tingling arousal sensations but my penis would never seem to get very hard or stay erect.  That seemed to me blood was starting to flow in but continuing straight out because the vascular constriction necessary for an erection was not taking place.  If I can find the reference material again where I read this I’ll post a link for you.  When discussing  ”nerve sparing“ my Dr never mentioned this second set of nerve bundles just the two bundles either side of the prostate.

Lastly, it seemed to me some penis length was lost immediately post surgery.  However, after using the vacuum pump it seemed to me the length recovered.  I never really measured it however so I may have just come to terms with a new normal shorter length.  The one good erection seemed normal length.

Again, thanks for the replies.  I appreciate the support.