Alteration of sex life: Jean-Marc Sylvestre confides in his prostate cancer

In his latest book It’s not all fucked upthe famous economic journalist Jean-Marc Sylvestre reveals to have survived prostate cancer fifteen years ago, even if the disease had serious consequences on his sex life.

“It was complicated”

“Here: I don’t have a hard-on anymore. My penis is dead, reduced to a vague presence without life, without heat, a dangling thing, a wrinkled skin through which passes urine, urine and nothing else. I don’t ‘have more sperm’, he says in his book. After the care and the operation, which he has long hidden from his relatives, Jean-Marc Sylvestre has finally ended up regaining his libido. “It was complicated, but it got better over time, and with age, my demands may have also decreased”he wrote.

When a man has surgery for prostate cancer, his sex life is affected, but to varying degrees depending on the severity of the disease. “If you have an operation for prostate cancer, your sexuality will not be able to be the same as before”, explains Professor Georges Fournier (Brest), president of the French Association of Urology, in our program Questions aux experts. “For a simple reason: if the prostate is removed, you will no longer have sperm. On the other hand, there will always be the pleasure linked to ejaculation and the manifestation of the libido”, continues the specialist.

Erection: “it all depends on whether we can keep the nerves”

“Concerning the erection, everything depends on whether we can keep the nerves at the origin of the mechanism around the prostate. If so, the patient will still be able to have erections, even if the recovery is not systematic. If unfortunately the disease is too extensive, then the patient will no longer be able to have an erection”, explains Georges Fournier.