My friend and colleague, Richard Wassersug published an article on April 4, 2013 on the on-line service, Uro-Today.com, about the lack of reliability on internet sites when they discuss hormone therapy. Dr. Wassersug is a Professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Dalhousie University, Canada. His research interests include the
Psychosocial impact of prostate cancer treatments, psychological role of estrogen and testosterone in males and the psychology of androgen deprivation. He is also an advanced prostate cancer survivor and writes from our perspective.

He described his article by saying, “This article is one of a series of studies that my colleagues and I have published in the last year related to helping prostate cancer (PCa) patients recognize and adapt to the side effects of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). In the first et article, we document the core problem—both patients and their partners are poorly informed about the side effects of ADT. We argue that patients are unlikely to take timely action to manage adverse effects if they don’t know about them in the first place. Similarly, since ADT can alter the mood, personality, and sexual performance of patients, their partners need to know about the impact of ADT in order to maintain a strong spousal partnership with good quality of life for both of them.

We believe that the common euphemism for ADT, “hormone (or hormonal) therapy,” may be part of the problem”.

As usual his articles are a must read for all of us advanced prostate cancer survivors. You can read the entire interesting article at: Dr. Wassersug talks about ADT

Joel T. Nowak, M.A., M.S.W.