Behind the door | Martin, his cancer, and his new “mission”

The Press offers you a weekly testimony that aims to illustrate what really happens behind the bedroom door, in privacy, far, far from statistics and standards. Today: Martin, 51 years old.

Her sexuality was her life. And then Martin got cancer. Not just any: prostate cancer. From one day to the next, everything changed, collapsed. So much so that he now feels invested with a “mission”: to warn men of the importance of screening. Prevention. In short, information. Interview.

But first, a clarification. The story of Martin, 51 years old and an artist by profession, is obviously not limited to his cancer, diagnosed three years ago. “Everything is interesting,” said the smiling fifty-year-old, without the slightest false modesty. Everything is out of the ordinary! » Starting with his looks, or rather its form. Let’s just say he would have been easily given 20 years younger. It gives you an idea of ​​the character, frank, direct and colorful, who was also intimidated in his youth, because “effeminate”, “plump, with pins and buttons”. “Yes, we are far from that time,” he concedes, laughing, one sunny Wednesday afternoon, seated in front of a healthy salad, in a small café in the northern crown.

Very young, Martin knows that he likes boys. Those around him also say they “always knew” when he made his coming outaround the age of 17.

Allow us to quickly pass on his adolescence, difficult, with little or no self-confidence, his first experience with a girl (“when you are 17, you are turned on by everything!”), then his first “taponnages with a guy I met one evening in a bar in the Village. “It really proved to me that this was what I wanted…”

Quietly, as her body becomes “the center of [son] universe” in the early twenties, Martin became aware of his charms. “My desire has always been to have a boyfriend,” he says. Nevertheless, between the ages of 20 and 40, his life is more like a “porn movie”.

He builds a “role of seducer”: “every gesture, every word is thought out”, a smile and voila, he brings someone home. “I went out five nights a week, and each time I came back with someone different. »

Admittedly, he always dreams of a lover (“I want to get married!”), but all it takes is a “crooked tooth” to “eliminate someone”. And at the same time, Martin is having fun. Not halfway. He even discovered his “exhibitionist nudist” side during an outing with friends at the Sainte-Marguerite-du-Lac-Masson falls (to which access is now prohibited): “My God, what an extraordinary feeling of freedom, says- he. Everyone should do nudism in their life, there would be no more war! »

This is also where his pleasure of being naked in front of clothed people is born, and his power to thus “raise the party (no pun intended). “A power I abused,” he said, smiling knowingly. He also danced at that time (in his thirties) naked in private parties: “I had to funI am assumed, muscular, I have good friends. […] These are beautiful partiesvery beautiful parties… »

We half understand that he seizes here all the power of his erections.

Nevertheless, for all sorts of reasons, at the turn of the forties, Martin decides to settle down and tries the experience of the couple. The affair lasts three years, and it is after a painful break-up that Martin loses his mother as a bonus. “I had a close relationship,” he says, and his illness is a real shock. Worse: his death a year later is an “unbearable nightmare”. “It was my first bereavement. “It is unfortunately not the last.

It is indeed shortly after that his diagnosis falls, quite by chance, while doing a usual blood test with a new doctor. “I asked to do a PSA test [prostate-specific antigen, ou APS en français], normally we do that at 50, but I have a hypochondriac friend who advised me. And today, Martin in turn recommends it to all men of his age. Because since then, he has seen his life crumble.

First test, “you’re young, in good shape, he thinks, it’s probably nothing”. He is 48 years old and is actually “on fire”. A second test and a biopsy later (“traumatic episode”), it’s official. “I have bad news” confirms the urologist, asking him ” right there to choose his treatment. “But I am in deep shock! »

We would be unless: the day before, he had “the best sex in [sa] life” with his current roommate, and then he hears that we are going to try to “preserve his two erectile nerves”? “There’s no guarantee, basically there’s a one in two chance that I’m not correct. And a chance in two that Viagra will work on me…” Note that his case is so advanced (stage 3) that other treatments (radiotherapy, hormone therapy) are not options. Ah yes, and he will never ejaculate again and risk suffering from incontinence, at least for a while.

You are spared the appointments, the operation and his subsequent depression, all this in the midst of a pandemic. “It was terrible, confirms Martin, his eyes suddenly full of water. What a nightmare ! I have no more strength, I am terrified and empty. I collapse. »

It was three years ago. One therapy later, and how much research, waiting, Kegel exercises, more waiting, and treatments of all kinds (and how many thousands of dollars!), he remains hopeful. He should soon have access to injections. He is no longer incontinent and if he has not recovered 100% of his erections, his situation is improving. “And I can see that it’s me that bothers me more than the others…”, he drops. He hasn’t lost any of his sensations.

If he wanted to testify here, it was to sound the alarm: “go see your doctors, take your PSA”, he insists. When will there be psychological support for men struggling with such cancer, groups of men to discuss their experience, accessible information on possible treatments? “I would have liked so much that someone shared this with me…”