Refused Treatment

[FruitPoppets]

A close friend has refused treatment for cancer.

The consultant told him they could cure him.

He has refused due to side effects of treatment- he does not want to lose erections.

he is 60 with 3 children and a wife. He has two grandchildren.

I know sex is important for so many relationships but surley you would want to stay alive to see your family grow up?

As one who is hanging onto the hope that my treatment will work for my aggressive cancer, I cannot understand why your friend would even consider refusing treatment, with a potentially curative effect.

I’ve had a mastectomy, reconstructive surgery and a hysterectomy. I’m also on hormone therapy and chemotherapy. Sex life has been shot to pieces. I don’t care, I want to live!

It's never as simple as this. They may be able to cure him. He will always be at a higher risk of associated cancers. He may lose a lot more than erections. Treatment may work, it may not, it may delay the inevitable.
His body, his choice.

My MIL watched my FIL undergo aggressive and unpleasant cancer treatment and then die anyway. When she had a potentially treatable cancer herself later she didn’t seek diagnosis or treatment. It was only when family noticed how ill she was looking and intervened that she was diagnosed, by which point it was too late.

It’s more complicated than your post suggests.

Prostate cancer can be slow growing, many men die with it rather than of it. The treatment can involve hormone treatment, loss of sexual function and incontinence, maybe he has weighed these factors up and made a choice that feels right for him.

Cancer is hard enough to deal with without feeling guilt tripped into undergoing unpleasant and aggressive treatment which may or may not work..

I am a similar age to him and I would refuse treatment too, I nursed my husband through an aggressive cancer during lockdown and it changed how I view life.

I know it isnt simple and its his body and his choice.

Just wondered what others take on it was. I wonder how his wife feels too.

its not agressive but treatment recommended.

clearly its very important to him but erections wont last forever.

I am so sorry for everyone on the post affected by cancer and I wish you all well x

@Seawolves that must have been so difficult for you. It would change your view absolutley x

@6namechange3 he absolutley has. I was just surprised but we are all different!

It's the old 'quantity versus quality' debate isn't it ? Some people would always choose quantity even if it meant a massively diminished life and others would choose quality of life, even if that means a reduced lifespan and neither is wrong.

@Enigma54 I really hope your treatment works! I feel the same as you but I know we all have different priorities in life!

take care xx

You are right. Very well put. X

He might just be saying it’s about sex when really he’s terrified of something else.

If his cancer is prostate cancer, it can be incredibly slow growing and manageable for years. Something people die with rather than from.

And it sounds like your friend has chosen quality over quantity. Good for him.

One of my cousins had prostate cancer and the treatment isn’t something to be taken lightly. 3 years on, he still hasn’t regained normal sexual function. He also had radiation which impacted his bowel too and although he’s now ‘cured’, there’s a lot of complications.

It’s likely not as simple as taking some drugs and just like that, it all goes away. It can definitely have a profound effect on a person.

He told you the only reason he's refusing is because he doesn't want to lose the ability to get an erection and he'd have treatment otherwise? That's very specific.

A lot of people have strong feelings about cancer treatment and quality of life. Sometimes a decision like this seems irrational, but quality of life isn't really an objective thing that someone else can weigh out for you. And sometimes people summarize very complex emotions and decisions with something straightforward and even flippant because it's easier.

Step Dad regretted having treatment for his prostate cancer. It can go horribly wrong, and it affected the rest of his life. He eventually died of COVID, dementia and heart failure anyway.

But his last few years were marred by loss of erection, loss of bladder control, had to have a catheter, which always leaked. He smelled, the house smelled, he had constant UTI's, he was in hospital every year to get new stents in his tubes, he had Sepsis three times with long hospital stays.

It's not a straight forward decision to make.

Your OP is really oversimplifying the situation.

As so many others have said, it comes down to quality of life and not length of life for many people.
Presumably you don't know all the ins and outs of the discussion with the medics, and the thought processes the person has gone through, but, ultimately, it is their choice.

I don't think any of us know for certain what we would say when faced with making a decision, but, currently, my experience with quite a few people is that it is the treatment that makes you ill, not the symptoms of the illness itself. Now, there are so many "it depends on...." to factor in, but, as a principle, I'd be more likely to chose living for a shorter time but feeling fine, over being kept alive, but feeling awful.

Im a man and suffer occasionally from prostatitis (inflammation), the drug that I get prescribed, tamsulosin, which is also used with prostate cancer and kidney stones, well everything works as it should, but all sensation is lost - some never recover it, not nice.

At the same time I know men in their 70s who have had prostate cancer for over 10 years, minimal conservative treatment and still no problems.

So I guess your friend is rolling lifes dice, before modern medicine, not that long ago that was your only option.

Unfortunately he won’t be able to have any erections if he is dead or seriously ill. Hopefully his cancer is very slow growing and he will die of something else. Untreated prostate cancer tends to metastasise to the bones and can cause a great deal of pain and even paralysis if it affects the spine.
Any treatment depends on what stage and how aggressive his cancer is. Some men can have radiotherapy without hormone treatment which would be much less likely to result in ED and no libido. Brachytherapy is another possible option with generally fewer side effects.
He should have some counselling to come to terms with it.

With prostate cancer there are hard decisions to be made based on a lot of different factors, so there's probably more to this. I'd keep well out of it tbh.

I think perhaps you would do well to spend less time critiquing your dying close friend’s motivation on the internet and more time looking to how you can support him and his wife through the hardest, worst journey of their lives.

Who says he's dying?, he has refused treatment for prostate cancer, that's a condition he could die with not of, or of after many more years - we are all dying at the end of the day, life's a terminal condition.

Treatment for Prostrate cancer can be brutal with terrible side effects and your friend may just be using the erection excuse as a glib comment to hide his true feelings, thankfully my Dad's prostate cancer was advanced enough to have the choice to have it removed surgically, not sure if it 'functions' as not a conversation I want to have with him, but his friends wasn't too advanced so was only offered radiotherapy which has left him fecally incontinent and he bitterly regrets the treatment as he will now possibly live longer but not happily.

It’s a personal choice and I am presuming his DC are adults?