Thanks everyone.

This sounds like something I have struggled with for 13-years now. I had surgery for prostate cancer and I still can't look back on that period without feeling betrayed and violated.

From what I know now, the doctor was less than honest, indifferent, and rushed me through an assembly-like, surgery process. The result of the surgery negatively altered the quality of my life and to add insult to injury, much research after the fact (based on the work of Dr. Roger Guillemin) convinced me that my symptoms did not warrant surgery.

But the diagnosis was presented to me with such urgency that I was under the knife within two weeks from receipt of the biopsy report. Given what I know now, I would not have elected to have surgery at that time. Every bad result that I experienced, he assured me would not be the case. As he put it, '...you have less than a 5% chance of a bad result. I wouldn't worry if I were you'.

In the end, the result triggered feelings that I carried around the sexual assault I experience at 8-years old. Somehow they felt the same. Maybe because the surgery left me impotent for life at a very young age, a condition unresponsive to ED medication and treatments. Both events felt like they altered me, violated me, scrambled my DNA.

I remember that at one point, I wanted to get a prosthetic so that I could have a chance at physical intimacy, a chance for long-term relationship, a life partner. My insurance company turned me down. So, I appealed; but in order to appeal, I had to appear in front of 7 strangers and explain, in detail, why sex was a quality of life issue for me, a man in his early 40s. They turned me down anyway and said it was a medical issue and not a quality of life issue. It was a humiliating experience.

So just being around doctors can bring up negative emotions and feelings of anxiety. Not to mention lack of trust. This is a barrier to seeking any kind of medical treatment.

Wow. This is the first time I actually told this story. Thank you. - L