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I was diagnosed with prostate cancer back in Febuary of this year. After radiation and hormone therapy I am currently cancer free. I do not understand why but after my iniatial diagnosis I seem to have lost all desire to dress. At first I thought this was temporary,but after 8 months still no desire. As someone who felt guilty about dressing for over 50 years this seems like a huge relief. Just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar or am I deceiving myself?
Congrats on the cancer victory!!! As to the rest, I've had very brief moments (longest maybe a couple of days) where I felt no urge whatsoever to wear anything fem. Had the thought that "wouldn't this be great if it was gone". But then the fog returned each time. But then I've never been through cancer or anything like that.
Have to wonder, if whatever is different in our brains could be affected by the chemo or radiation. Not that I want to try. Others on here HAVE been through cancer and they're still here and dressing, but still I gotta wonder.
Next question, if you no longer feel the need or desire to dress and by definition you're no longer a "crossdresser", will you keep coming around here?
First the good news...and it's very good news, you are free of cancer - way to go! Of course, I'm sure you are aware that all of the treatments, surgery, radiation,hormonal treatments or combination thereof all have side effects. Now if you had hormonal treatments, you were probably treated with Luprin or something like it, which inhibits the production of testosterone and carries with it the effect of inhibiting sexual desire. So, I'm thinking by extension if you have a sexual response to your dressing, it may be inhibited. Did you experience hot flashes during this time? If so, it too might be the Luprin. As I have understood, it is also not a permanent condition. So, your desire might return.
I am not a doctor, I'm just a guy that has had prostate cancer also. These treatments and their side effects were discussed with me going in. I did not require the hormonal treatments, but they were discussed with me at the time. Any effect on dressing is merely speculation on my part. Absolutely talk to your oncologist, and be as honest as you can. I just hope some of this point you in the right direction, and continued best wishes to you.
Pedalgirl, yahoooooo I'm/we are sooooooo happy for you. You are among the 15 percenters. Huraaaaaah for you. Drugs, especially the ones taken to treat medical issues depress our desires. Give it some time. I know 8, months but it may take even more for your normal desires to return. Of course if you don't want this desire to return, it's pretty much gone. Take care and stop in and visit now and again if you feel like it, we'd love to see you.
I've had the surgery and later the radiation. Officially back "too low to measure".
It took a solid year to come back 100% from the surgery. The radiation wasn't quite so rough but still I found afternoon naps a useful routine.
You hear all the stories about surgery and radiation - people back to work in two weeks, or working the whole time they're getting the radiation. The Docs tell you all the side effects but they're not going to encourage you to consider yourself an invalid because your attitude affects the quality of your outcome.
I am positive your oncologist wants to hear about something familiar and important to you like 'the urge' if it hasn't returned following your treatment.
Congratulations on your victory over cancer. PM me if I can answer any questions.
-Camilla
I had chemo from 2009 until 2012.
From 2012-2015, I had no interest in dressing.
From 2016-2018, I was tempted but didn't really buy anything.
From 2019- now it's been near constant.
Chemo left me so flat, and I also had a brain bleed at the same time, and I'm not the person I was before.
I havent experienced anything like it, but, Im pleased you are cancer free, thats a victory.
All that matters is that you are cancer free. Urges of all kinds come and go, sometimes repeatedly. Enjoy life in whatever form appeals to you now.
Pedalgirl, I had my diagnosis in Feb 2019, and surgery to remove the prostate just 3 weeks later. I have not experienced any loss or lack of desire to dress, if anything, quite the opposite. But I have not needed any chemo, or radiotherapy, nor have I had any medication, so that might make a difference. Anyway, regular checks since are all good, too low to measure.
Glad you are recovering. Kaye
At this point I really do not know. I use to visit the site 2 or 3 times a week but this was my first time in about 3 months. As for the brain being affected by chemo or radiation I personally do not have any idea. I guess it is possible.
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I was diagnosed in febuary I got my first shot in may and started radiation treatments in june and completed the radiation treatments in july. I do not know how long the hormone treatments will last as I am scheduled for another shot in febuary. Yes I do get hot flashes. As for the desire to dress it seems to have went away right after I was diagnosed, 3 months before I began treatment.
pedalgirl, I'm glad that you have beat cancer. I'm sure the desire will return.
My wife is a breast cancer survivor. A good friend is a lung cancer survivor. Both complain what is described as "chemo brain." It'd not uncommon to have changes in mental thinking and attitudes after being bombarded with radiation and chemotherapy. I noticed your age, 72. Some others have reported prostate cancer in that age range. If you served in Viet Nam or the "Blue Water Navy", prostate cancer is a presumptive illness of Agent Orange. See the Department of Veterans' Affairs.
Pedalgirl and all other survivors, Super congrats on beating it, nothing else matters and we should enjoy each day as much as possible.
On the CD front, you may be accidentally hitting on an important and often discussed topic which never fails to go all over the place, the "why" of what we do. For you, and I think many others, there seems to be a fetish or sexual aspect to CDing which seems to be often later replaced by a different mindset or purpose. I am only continuing on this line for the possible discussions, not to say who is right or even that any of us have the same motives and actions. Clearly CDing is a spectrum of activities, with a broad range of motivators, but many seem to have similar starts and trajectories.
If possible, you and the others with similar histories may be in a special position to answer questions that the rest of us cannot. As someone who has had some major medical issues, concussions and other life threatening events (I got Last Rites, they're good for a year and that was 20 years ago, got to the hospital not breathing and no blood pressure) I can attest that there are some significant differences after recovering (diet, personality, memory, speech patterns). I had actually dressed earlier in the day of the accident and my wife had really hoped the accident would knock it out of me. As I recovered I did eventually find my way back to my special closet and picked up where I left off so my answer is "continue as before" though the event did alter my outlook on life in general.
Would you like to have the desire to dress back as before? Please share, so few of us get to see the other side of these events in the way you did.
Do you think it's related to sexual interest, not only specific activities but overall mindset?
Any other info you care to share is greatly appreciated, we're very lucky to have a site like this where everyone's opinion and interest is accepted and open for discussion, mutual support is expected and in great supply. I cannot think of any site, on any topic, which hasn't quickly devolved into factions and fighting.
Thanks for surviving and sharing!
Glad you got through the cancer successfully. The desire may or may not come back. My desire to dress left me for about 5 years. However, it recently came back.
Congratulations on beating cancer! All the rest matters very little! Dressing can be a blessed curse! You might be double free! What is important is to be happy!
I had prostate cancer and received 9 weeks of radiation treatments, ending early 2012. During and after treatment, my desires were pretty non-existent.
Five years later, the pink fog hit. I started shopping for lingerie. After walking out of a Victoria's Secret I saw my first Soma. Since then, I've worn panties and started wearing bras about 2 months later.
I've been a Soma girl ever since!
Pedalgirl, your loss of interest is quite different from my experience with prostate cancer treatment. I was diagnosed in May 2019 and received 8 weeks of radiation plus Elegard which is a time released Lupron treatment. My testosterone went to essentially zero but my gender tended to show an increase with regard to my female-like feelings. That makes sense with no testosterone in my system but one thing is always true about hormones - your mileage may vary. Or so it seems.
Problem is everybody's gender configuration laid out in the brain is also highly variable and is adaptable to changing circumstances. In other words not all males have identical masculine gender behaviors or concepts and the same goes for females. So, what we really have here are two variables, each with huge natural variations, and each varying at the same time. Result? Variable outcomes.
I have talked to transwomen who had an orchiectomy (removal of testicles) that saw in increase in the female-like behaviors and their comfort at feeling and expressing female 24/7. They now perceive themselves as their true self. But then there are the accounts in this thread of people who, like you, went the other direction and lost interest.
Mixed effects like this often may indicate something else is going on with personally defining the identity. Thus, I don't think the prostate or the cancer has anything to do with your gender identity with regard to biochemical effects, but it can have a profound effect on the psychological aspects because of the method of treatment of this specific type of cancer. And that can expose whatever state your more fundamental gender identity configuration is as determined by genetics.
Thus, if there is gender dysphoria before testosterone blockage and it is the testosterone that potentially is "causing" the dysphoria then removal of testosterone may relieve the dysphoria. Then the neural nets that produce gender behaviors adjust to this new condition. Then if your gender is fundamentally configured as mostly male-like you may find the dysphoria declines as you find that now you can be more male-like whereas before you often tended to be female-like due to a very real but completely psychological need to sometimes express as female due to adaptation to environmental influences.
But if your basic genetic gender (not sex) leans more toward the female-like then the removal of testosterone relieves the gender dysphoria caused by a biochemically based conflict between your male sex, which requires testosterone, and your female-like gender configuration in the brain's neural nets.
Thus, the removal of testosterone whether as a result of prostate cancer or anything else including accidental castration can change your sense of who you are in either way depending upon the basic genetic configuration that was very likely established before you were born and developing in the womb.
In other words, prostate cancer has little or nothing to do with your gender behaviors but the common reduction of testosterone in prostate cancer treatment may raise hell with your gender identity depending on what gender configuration is innate to you and limited by the functioning of thousands of genes operating within those innate genetic boundaries.
Thus, different people will react to those drastic testosterone variations that essentially are biochemical castration that is reversible by removal of the testosterone blocker drug. Perhaps during these times your innate gender configuration is fully exposed and if you lean, genetically, toward the male-like side you lose the female-like feelings that are generated by psychological adaptation. However, if your genetic gender leans more toward the female-like the male-like neural nets become much less active and your feminine feelings increase without the testosterone.
Keep in mind that is part of the process of transitioning - get rid of the testosterone as much as possible and increase the estrogen to complement a fundamentally female-like identity. But doing that in a fundamentally (genetically) male-like person removes the female-like feelings that are very real but perhaps mostly psychologically based as an adaptation to environment and circumstances. Just as important as the genetically female-like male but the treatment produces very different consequences. The big take away, in my view, is to not confuse sex and gender even though both may be affected by sex hormones in very different ways and thus produce very different results and consequences.
First and foremost, congratulations on beating cancer. :)
As for the "desire", I'd advise to take it in stride. An experience like that you've recently been through is likely to produce any number of emotional changes. Some may be short term, others may be permanent.