prostate cancer and penile implants

implants
I have not gotten an implant, but I have intentions of pursuing that surgery. There's a video on the Internet where Dr. Francoise Eid of Presbyterian Hospital in New York City talks about implants & their success rate. (He's done thousands, apparently.) I have not contacted him, but I plan to, eventually. He sounds very competent, and very confident, that implants WORK for patients. Most of the literature I've read about implants give them a 90% or better "satisfaction" rate (from both the men patients & their mates).

I'm a Gleason 4+3, with a very lousy biopsy result but a very good post-prostatectomy result (I had been a Gleason 9, before surgery, and I even had the biopsy results confirmed by pathologists at Johns Hopkins, who made things worse by finding a Gleason 8 elsewhere in my prostate, before surgery). I have made it through three PSA tests so far, all <0.1 undetectable, but I want to see at least one more such good result, before I head for Implant-Land. No sense wasting good money (and, Dr. Eid and a doctor near where I live have each said that insurance companies normally cover implants for prostate patients who can demonstrate a need--I hope I will not have to go very far in "demonstrating" my need, but if I must, I will.

I still cannot get over the fact that my post-surgery pee pads were named "Sir Dignity." Yeah, right. (There's no dignity about having prostate cancer.) That's why I had my catheter decorated to look like a dog, and I entered Johns Hopkins' big lobby pulling "Fluffy" two feet behind me. It cracked up many of the people in the lobby, there--I suspect many of them knew firsthand the aggravation of trying to pin a Foley catheter inside one's pants-leg. So, I just said to hell with it, and turned Foley into "Fluffy." We have to laugh, sometimes, about this disease, or it can drive us crazy. I still cherish the warning on a vacuum tube I purchased, that warns men to go to the Emergency Room immediately in case of an erection that lasts four hours. I'm like Jeff Foxworthy--if that happens to me (the four-hour erection), I'm going to the Emergency Room and yell to all there, "Anybody want to hang some laundry on this thing?" In that case, also, I'd want someone to alert the press. Just to get the event on record. As things stand (or not), the four-hour erection doesn't even make it onto the front page of my notes covering Things I'm Worried About. Good luck to you--don't take things lying down!