One of the critical things we consider after doctors tell we have prostate cancer is how will the various treatments affect our quality of life, especially our sexual function.

Various degrees of impotency are side effects of virtually any kind of treatment for prostate cancer, but like my mother—God rest her soul—said, “Impotency can’t kill you, prostate cancer can.” Her father, by the way, died of prostate cancer.

Here’s the problem: the prostate rests in a bed of nerves that control urinary and sexual functions, so the surgeon must navigate gingerly around those critical spots to pluck out the prostate. As in the words of the Wicked Witch of the West, these things must be done delicately.

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Hurry up and get here! I’m tired of waiting! My life is seemingly “on hold” until you get here! Don’t dwaddle any longer! Come on! Get here, you!

And just who is this “you?” It’s not a person, it’s a date: Sept. 17, a Monday. On that day, the results of my blood test will tell the doctor whether my prostate cancer has returned.

For the past five years, every six months, I’ve been told it hasn’t—and chances are better than 90 percent that I’ll be told the same thing on Sept. 17. Regardless of your odds, however, you still sweat it out, to varying degrees, until you hear the news, because with cancer, as with everything else in life, except for death and taxes, there are no guarantees.

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