I Feel Whole

A man I implanted several years ago came back for his follow-up and said something I’ve thought about many times since.

He was in his sixties. Never married. He’d had prostate cancer, had the surgery, lost function that didn’t come back.

Before the implant he told me something directly.

“If I can’t perform, I’ll never look for love again.”

Not dramatically. Just a conclusion he’d arrived at after living with it for a while.

He had the surgery.

I saw him six months later.

He looked different in the way men do when something they’ve struggled with is no longer there.

He didn’t talk much about the implant itself.

He said he felt whole again.

He said he was ready to meet someone. That was the report.

Closer Than He Had Been in Decades

The 83-year-old came back ​six months after surgery​ and told me these were going to be the best two or three years of his life.

He said he was closer with his partner than he had been in decades.

That it was worth it, no matter how much or how little time he had.

I’ve implanted men in their eighties before and I’ll implant them again.

Age isn’t usually the limiting factor.

Health is.

The men who understand that tend to arrive on the other side saying some version of what he said.

Worth it.

No matter how much time.

Tom and Debbie

Tom has had his implant for five years.

​He and his wife Debbie​ have been married forty-four years.

Tom told me he doesn’t even think about the implant anymore.

It’s just part of him.

Debbie was asked whether she could tell during sex.

She said no. Not at all.

What she noticed was something else.

Before the implant, they’d be together and then Tom would have to get up and come back.

By the time he returned, the moment was gone.

They did that for a year.

With the implant, she said, within thirty seconds they’re moving on.

They don’t have to plan around it.

That was her version of spontaneity.

Not a concept.

Not a slogan.

Just the absence of an interruption that had become part of their lives.

Tom also said something I’ve never forgotten.

“Having an implant is not going to make you feel better about yourself. What it does is balance your life out and take away some of those frustrations. And that is the power that allows you to improve who you are.”

I wrote that one down.

Because after twenty years of doing this, it’s about as honest a description as I’ve heard.

There’s one more thing he said toward the end of our conversation.

“If I had known fifteen years ago what I know today about my life and my connection and how I feel about myself—I must have been insane to wait so long.”

Making a Decision Matters

I hear some version of that often.

Not from every man.

But from enough of them that it stays with me.

The men who say it usually aren’t the ones who rushed into surgery.

They’re the ones who spent ​years managing uncertainty​.

Pills.

Devices.

​Injections.​

Avoidance.

Trying to make something unreliable become reliable.

I can explain what the surgery involves.

I can explain recovery.

I can explain satisfaction rates and long-term outcomes.

What I can’t explain is what it feels like to live on the other side of it.

The ​bachelor who felt whole​ again.

The 83-year-old who called it the best years of his life.

Tom not thinking about the implant anymore.

Debbie and the thirty seconds.

Those stories belong to them.

I’m just the one who gets to hear them.