Followup--hubby's trip to the urologist

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I thought I'd give you guys an update about my husband's first trip to the urologist yesterday. You might recall he was on Prozac for about 2-3 years (short time off of it last year) with at first minimal side effects of delayed ejaculation and then steadily worsening side effects of sporadic ED and then almost constant ED. He tapered off the Prozac and things got better for a short time, then rapidly worse. This also coincided with a whole host of other outside stressors: a job that was slowly killing him with stress, terrible financial difficulties and some issues with one of our kids, not to mention some ongoing issues with our marriage. Things are good between us and have been for the most part, but we went through a very rocky period from 2001 to last summer. Job loss, depression, feelings of resentment on both sides--too much to even get into. Through all this, amazingly, loss of libido (his) was never an issue. Mine was

another story--which compounded the problem. He left the nuthouse job a few weeks ago, started getting regular sleep and going back to the gym on a regular basis lo and behold and his equipment began to function again, though still very sporadic and not at a level he considered close to the days when it worked on demand the way it should (his words). However, it was better than ZERO, which was what it had been before. He still was feeling awful about it. Anyway, he had already been to our primary doc who ran a full battery of tests on him and came away with nothing except a blood test to repeat for low testosterone. This was when he was first tapering off the Prozac. He went back for a repeat blood test (post Prozac ) and it was normal. So the urologist did an even more thorough workup and pronounced him absolutely healthy and in great shape. He said that as far

as he could see, his issues were most likely psychological and not physiological. They talked about what the doc termed "the death spiral" which basically sounded like performance anxiety to me--where he fails once and dwells on it, then it happens again and he starts to panic. Maybe things work once or twice but he's fearful the entire time and then he has another failure and he starts into the spiral downhill. He gave my husband some Levitra samples--which I have mixed feelings about. He has taken Levitra before (while on Prozac) with good results, but if it is psychological, I"m afraid he will become dependent (psychologically) on these pills to perform. I"ve tried to tell him that I just want us to be us and that whatever happens, we can still have a rip-roaring good time in bed. In fact, when he does have an erection, it's in some weird way a let-down because we're so focused on doing something with it before it

goes away, that all foreplay is immediately suspended! But then again, maybe a string of successes with the Levitra will be a boost for his confidence? In the past, a 1/4 to 1/2 of a 10 mg tablet worked fine. But of course, in his zestful quest for success, he took the entire tablet last night. Geez, those things are expensive and insurance doesn't cover them! I want to hoard them not just blow through them! I didn't go with my husband yesterday, but if I had, I might have asked this doc about the whole theory of SSRI's and permanent or ongoing side effects.

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