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The Healing Partnership

        Prostate cancer's special impact on men

        The critical role of the caregiver

        The effect of prostate cancer on relationships

        Healing versus curing


Men don't want to talk about it. They may think it can't happen to them. They may think it only happens to old men who are dying anyway. Or they may think it invariably leads to impotence and incontinence — unspeakable propositions.

All of these notions are wrong. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), more than 140,000 new cases of prostate cancer are diagnosed in the United States each year, and one in ten men in the United States develops cancer in the semen-producing prostate gland, almost the same incidence as breast cancer among women; and 20 percent of these men are, according to the U.S. Census Bureau middle-aged (forty to sixty-five years old). In 1994, it was second only to lung cancer as the leading cancer killer among American men.