A diary describing the mental, psychological, emotional (and physical) ravages endured by one man facing prostate cancer treatments and their side effects -- and how he tried to overcome them.

Jacob Rokk is a plainspoken man with an ordinary background: after a Midwestern, rural childhood, he attended his state university to major in math and become a software developer, settling in the growing technology hub in Silicon Valley, CA. There he met and married the woman of his dreams and enjoyed life with her into his late 60's, preparing for retirement. Life was wonderful.

Then, a medical disaster changed him forever: advanced prostate cancer, requiring severe treatments with quality-of-life-destructive side effects, and a few years later, a recurrence demanding further "salvage" treatments, and even more annihilation of his ability to enjoy life.

But he found the most dreadful stroke was uncovering this truth: the man who endures something like this must suffer it in silence, because his environment constructs a world around him that brings shame and humiliation on him for expressing that he's experiencing those side effects.

For the painful reality is that this disease and its treatments affect a man in a most personal, private way by altering his identity in intimately hidden dimensions ... that must remain unspoken in polite social discourse, allowing no-one to be aware of the degree of his suffering. He learned the troubling revelation that "sexual function", in the context of prostate cancer, is not about what you do, but about what you are ... and the pervasive messaging is that you're no longer a man.

Jacob could not stand by idly facing what he regarded as an abject injustice that plagued his fellow victims - so he decided to publish his diaries, hoping to educate others. This diary records the journey of trying to survive the horrors of salvage therapy for the recurrence of his cancer.