Prostate Exams: The Fickle Finger of Fate...

Seriously... it isn't going to change your sexual orientation, if for no other reason than the fact that by the time you need it, your sex life is probably mostly a memory anyway. And suppose the urologist finds a lump or a rough spot on the prostate? Your next procedure is likely going to be a biopsy, and that's a mechanized version of a prostate exam that's repeated between six and eight times, to collect a range of samples for testing at the lab. The device that takes the samples makes an ominous clicking sound as it takes a tiny nip out of the target area each time, but it's relatively painless, because there aren't a lot of active nerves in that region, Thank God!

Let's say the lab examines your samples, and reports that they found evidence of cancerous growth in the prostate. Your PSA level (Prostate Specific Antigen)
at this point will be above normal. So before your urologist gives you the old razzle-dazzle about the 'Watch and Wait' (do nothing routine), and before your PSA level climbs past 18 or 20, (the upper limit for doing a brachytherapy procedure) ask him to refer you to the Cancer Society "for a second opinion", and when you get there, ask if you can qualify for their Brachytherapy procedure. If you meet the requirements, it only takes about 45 minutes for the actual procedure, you're 'out' during it, and when you wake up and are allowed
to get up, you can get dressed, and you're up and around again. If you look at the spot where the needles went in to place the radioactive pellets into your cancerous prostate, you probably won't even find any signs of blood or a bandage, it's that neat a procedure. And it's not painful - not like surgery.

It's a better procedure than external radiation, because the treatment isn't involving other nearby organs in the radiation stream. The radiation in this case is coming from between a hundred and a hundred and fifty tiny little radioactive metal pellets that have been embedded in the cancerous areas of the prostate, where they form a small 'cloud' of radiation not much larger than the gland itself and thus they don't affect surrounding organs, as might be the case with an external beam radiation treatment.

So, if you should happen to test positive for prostate cancer, that's the way to go, in my humble opinion. I had that Brachytherapy procedure in April of 2010
and I've been cancer-free ever since. I highly recommend it.  So get tested, and don't be afraid of what may come next. It beats the hell out of the alternatives. 
And you won't 'glow in the dark' or become radioactive, because the pellets aren't that strongly radioactive themselves, and they have a half-life of around sixty days to ninety days, depending on which type are used, so you will not have an active radiation source inside you for very long - just long enough to kill the cancer before it fades away itself. So don't worry about that part of it. It's a very scientific procedure, and well proven, and I assure you, it really works!