Finally pretty much over recovery from the radiation. So, it's been a strange 15 months, just bopping along, everything copacetic then whammo! But like anything else you ever have to get through in life, just putting your head down, start at one end, work your way methodically to the other, and then it poops you out. Well, I'm pooped out now. Either cured or not cured, but no longer the chaos of so many appointments, tests, slicing and dicing and frying and whatever. All over now. It either worked or it didn't. It'll dog me to the end of my days but that might be a year from now or 30 years from now. I already beat the odds to be where I am, which is fine, feeling pretty good. I can do pretty much everything I could before except spoodge, which I probably did enough of. I have been castrated (chemically) but it's way less of a deal than I ever imagined and changes almost nothing. Hope it works against the cancer, anyway. My hair is coming back in. I didn't lose hair in radiation (except my pubic hair, because that's where the radiation was) but where I was bald on my head it's now growing in with soft, black, curly/wavy hair and I imagine by Christmas I will have a full head of black hair, despite being bald and gray since the 1980s.
As for castration, and having a prostate removed, here's all the answers a person might be afraid to ask for. I do not suffer urinary or fecal incontinence, though both are the rule rather than the exception for the surgeries and radiation (I had a couple of hot nodes near the upper colon that got zapped and often means diapers. Got lucky. So, I do not wear diapers or pads. I can still pop boners and enjoy sex and have orgasms. I still have a libido and sex drive but no longer have unwanted thoughts about sex intrude and distract, the way it did about every 17 seconds for the previous 50 years. Instead I just get the sexthoughts headrush only in appropriate times and situations. In some ways this is more a blessing than a curse, and one I can live with. It's just as strong as ever, but confined to where it belongs. A lot of these outcomes, which are not typical, can be attribute to me being relatively young, having good medical care (and insurance), and being normal weight and in decent shape. The weight I attribute to kava. Heck, I couldn't even have had the surgery if I'd not been normal weight. Some, of course, is due to me being relatively young. And of course, good luck is a factor. I am medically non-gendered now, but that means nothing. I'm as gendered as anyone else, I just don't have any testosterone, having gone from way off the charts high back in Dec to nonexistent today. I never at any point suffered from anxiety nor depression during the treatments, which makes me fairly rare, as well. And though I did occasionally get fatigue, it was only in little waves, lasting at most a few hours but usually as little as a few minutes. I just sit down, breather deep and wait for it to pass, usually takes a few minutes.
I give kava a lot of credit here. First it dropped my weight to healthy and made me calm all the time so I rolled with the punches when the news came down. I used kava as a painkiller very effectively, bringing me great relief and keeping me off of drugs I did not want. It was useful to have concentrate and extract and candies for when I had nausea, which was not often. I really don't want to think what the past 15 months would have been like without kava.
Well, anyway, that's it, thread over. Kava wins!
