Men Eager to Renew Activities After Prostate Surgery
Aug. 18, 2000 -- Men who are recovering from prostate surgery want to become active again as soon as possible -- going for walks, mowing the lawn, and climbing stairs. Their wives, on the other hand, would like them to slow down after the operation. And, not surprisingly, sex is a big, but often unspoken, concern for both partners.
These are the findings of a study in which researchers from the Toronto-Sunnybrook Regional Cancer Centre asked 34 men with prostate cancer and their spouses about the issues they faced eight to 10 weeks after the men had prostate-removal surgery. The study appears in Cancer Practice, an American Cancer Society medical journal.
The five biggest issues gleaned from interviews, which lasted 45 minutes to an hour and a half, were:
- The men wanted to regain their activity level quickly.
- Hearing whether or not they were cancer-free influenced how the patients viewed their surgery and, in many cases, their recovery.
- The meaning of the cancer varied for couples, with most seeing the experience as a temporary setback.
- The couples cooperated with each other about care routines and in dealing with periods of irritability.
- While couples openly described a range of responses to side effects and complications from the surgery, including incontinence (the inability to control urination), there was an undercurrent of anxiety about sexual issues, particularly impotence or erectile dysfunction.
All 68 people involved in the Toronto study were white; the average age of the men was 60, with their wives typically three years younger. The couples had been married an average of 30 years, and most had an annual income of more than $40,000.
Researcher Ross E. Gray, PhD, co-director of the Psychosocial and Behavioral Research Unit at Toronto-Sunnybrook, tells WebMD he was struck by how supportive the couples were of each other.
"The wives were anxious to help, and the men by and large were willing to let them," Gray says. But one constant complaint by the women was that the men didn't always voice their feelings. "It's always been hard to get him to tell me," said one of the wives interviewed for the study. "Which, of course, worries me more than if he told me what was bothering him."