The Emotional Cost

It is Friday morning July 26 and I am at work. I always have a lot of typo's when I write from my phone but I have to write when I feel it inside otherwise anything of value is lost. I am hurting inside and it is not likely to go away anytime soon. I hurt not for myself but for the love of my life and what prostate cancer does to her.
    When I met Mandy I knew that I could search for the rest of my life and never find another like her. I had never known anyone so full of joy and so in love with life. It took so little to make her happy. In a material world all she needed was a bike and a kayak and her v.w. bus. That is the woman I fell in love with. We had a few short months  before my diagnosis and a few months after before hormones took away my libido. She should have left. Sometimes I wish she would have. Mandy met me a week after I turned 42. She was 27 and a single mom. The age gap didn't matter. She loved me. She still does and it kills me to watch this disease erode away the joy that makes her so amazing. Sadness is the new normal. It takes so little to make her happy. She just wants to be wanted. She just wants me to look at her the way a husband should. I make excuses and many are valid. Life does happen but truth be told a husband with a normal libido would make the time. It would be a priority. I love her so much. I ache for her. I am so frustrated I spew venom. I poison our marriage. Do I want her to leave? Perhaps I do. I love her and it would kill me inside but what do I have to offer. She is a wonderful mother but because of me she will have only one child. Our daughter will be 18 and out of school in less than three years. I may be gone soon as well. So will the best years of her life. It is not fair. What does she get out of this deal? She tries so hard to keep the intimate part of our marriage alive. More often than not she feels rejected.
   People have told me that if I had to get cancer that I got lucky that it was PCa. Those people are ignorant. Prostate Cancer is a slow death taking many casualties along the way. I compare what my wife goes through to watching a beautiful flower wilt and die due to lack of life giving water. It is wonderful that science has given me more years but is it too much to ask that I spend a little of it feeling masculine. Is it too much to ask that I be able to let my wife know that I see her as more yhan a friend and a partner. I want to show her she is attractive and desirable and wanted. These are the emotional casualties of Prostate cancer. Largely the patient does not feel it. Like a castrated dog he no longer thinks about sex. At least I am alive. What a pity. I always thought my wife would have to watch me die. Turns out to be the other way around. Todd