Quote: I can't ever truly understand the emotional side of it, just as he really couldn't understand my anguish when we couldn't get pregnant.
I think you've put your finger right on it here. This is the only thing for a woman that's remotely like ED for a man, except possibly a woman who wants to breastfeed and for some reason can't make that work. For a woman, not being able to get pregnant does undermine her sense of her own "womanliness"-- it is a way that her body is betraying her. But for a guy who may at one time in his life have experienced spontaneous erections (even unwanted ones when he was a teen), NEVER to be able to have a reliable erection is a misery that is with him constantly. It's a matter of encountering your "inadequacy" every single day. And when your woman tells you "it doesn't matter," (I thought that was a helpful thing to say...) it hurts even worse. It's a way of saying his erections don't matter, thus HE doesn't matter. I didn't say it was logical.
Re bladder cancer connection-- I think I got that wrong. I think it's smoking that is connected with bladder cancer. I remember when I read that that it struck me as odd. Go here- American Cancer Society.
Quote: Detailed Guide:
Bladder Cancer
What Are the Risk Factors for Bladder Cancer?
Smoking
The greatest risk factor for bladder cancer is smoking. Smokers are more than twice as likely to get bladder cancer as nonsmokers. Smoking causes nearly half of the deaths from bladder cancer among men (48%) and less than a third of bladder cancer deaths in women (28%). Some of the carcinogens (cancer-causing chemicals) in tobacco smoke are absorbed from the lungs and get into the blood. From the blood, they are filtered by the kidneys and concentrated in the urine. These chemicals in the urine damage the urothelial cells that line the inside of the bladder. This damage increases the chance of cancer developing.
