THERE WAS NO RESPONSE TO AN UPDATE REMINDER IN 2015 SO THERE IS NO UPDATE.

And, to back up a bit, for years I suffered from depression, insomnia, anxiety, and other things that doctors wanted to medicate with anti-depressants, sleeping meds, anti-anxiety meds, etc. The testosterone cured all of that in weeks and those meds are gone.

I was told by my TRT doc that I could resume treatments as soon as a urologist cleared me. My PSA in August was 5.0, in September, a DRE was clear and a PSA done right after the DRE was 5.3. In October, I saw the urologist, and my PSA was 4.9. He wanted to do a biopsy to clear me. I wasn't thrilled, but went along. Gleason 3+4 was the result, despite only a 25% chance of a positive result.

I met with the RO's and surgeons at two teaching hospitals, had my pathology slides re-read, and finally opted for surgery at Dartmouth. The surgeon didn't even remove any lymph nodes, telling me that the nomograms indicated less than 1% chance of them being affected. Surgery went off without a hitch, except for higher than average pain levels afterward. The doc told me that the pain levels were higher because I'm a serious weightlifter, and he had to punch through a thicker muscle wall than most people have. I also had a small umbilical hernia that was fixed during the surgery and that's been a bit painful.

I had the catheter out on 1/14, and I've had fairly good urinary control so far. One pad per day, and the only real leakage is when I either fart or sit down for a bowel movement. Impotence, of course, is there for now, although the nerves were spared and the doc things things will return just fine.

So, when I had to stop the testosterone, I felt like all the other problems would return immediately - depression, anxiety, insomnia, poor performance in the gym, brain fog at work, loss of focus, etc. Yet, it didn't happen quite that way.

I was absolutely fine in those areas, until late last week. The catheter was out, the post-surgery pathology was all great and the doc is convinced I'm cured, and I just need to wait out the impotence issues.

So after putting (hopefully) the worst of this behind me, why did I suddenly get slammed with all of the mental issues from before? I suppose I might have been so focused on dealing with the cancer that I never had time for those things to return earlier.

But, I'm now back at work, and I'm in a position of high responsibility in a small company, and I feel like I can barely function.

I've read that this isn't uncommon, but it just makes no sense. I don't want to go back on the other meds, especially because anti-depressants are likely to worsen any recovery from impotence.

My 3 month PSA test came back as undetectable. The depression that I reported shortly after my surgery is better, although I am taking an anti-depressant at the moment.

Incontinence is essentially gone, although I had a little bit of leaking last week while doing sit-ups at the gym.

I'm back to lifting hard in the gym, running on the weekends, and doing lots of fly fishing. Other than the effects on my sex life, things are pretty much back to normal.

Trimix works, but I don't use it a lot. I use 5mg of Cialis daily and I am starting to get some level of response from this. Chubbiness would be a good word to describe it. Hopefully this means that full function is something I can expect in the future.

My 6-month PSA is coming up in 5 weeks. If that's all clear, the surgeon has indicated that he will let me return to using testosterone. If that works out, I will hopefully be able to drop the anti-depressant. I'm hoping it might help with the ED as well, but we will see.

I continue to hope that I am cured, but even if that is the case, this past year has been filled with tough decisions and lots of time to reflect on permanent physical changes caused by my treatment. I'm still not sure if I'm happy with my treatment option or not. But, it can't be changed, so I move on.

Damon's e-mail address is: pcadamon AT gmail.com (replace "AT" with "@")

NOTE: Damon has not updated his story for more than 15 months, so you may not receive any response from him.