By Melissa Hadley Barrett — Nurse Practitioner, Sexologist, Founder of Restorative Health Clinic
Most people don’t expect a nurse practitioner to introduce herself by saying she hosts something called The Penis Project. But after years of sitting across from men — and their partners — who have quietly lost a part of their relationship they didn’t know how to get back, I’ve stopped being shy about it. Someone has to say the words out loud.
So here’s a bit about who I am, why I started Restorative Health Clinic, and what keeps me doing this work.
I’m a nurse practitioner and sexologist based in Western Australia, and I specialise in men’s health, sexual rehabilitation, and prostate cancer survivorship. That last part is where a lot of this began.
Early in my career I kept seeing the same story on repeat. A man is diagnosed with prostate cancer. The medical system does a remarkable job of treating the cancer — surgery, radiation, hormone therapy and then sends him home. What nobody warns him about properly is what comes next: erections that don’t return, incontinence, a body that feels foreign, a libido that’s vanished, and a relationship that starts to go quiet around the subject nobody wants to raise.
He doesn’t bring it up because he’s embarrassed, or because he thinks it’s the price of staying alive. His partner doesn’t bring it up because they don’t want to make him feel worse. And so, a couple that survived cancer together slowly stops touching.
For years, men's sexual health was just one part of my work. That changed because of one woman. I'll call her Grace.
Grace was a retired nurse I'd known for years. When she came to me for a routine women's health check, I found severe vaginal atrophy; painful, common, and very treatable. She knew that. She hadn't sought help.
When I asked why, she burst into tears. Her husband had undergone prostate cancer surgery two years earlier. Nobody had warned them his erections might not return. When they didn't, he withdrew completely stopped touching her, pulled away when she reached for his hand. "That part of me isn't in use anymore," she said. "It's like the light went out."
He eventually came in too. Depressed, angry no one had prepared him, convinced his Viagra "didn't work" because no one had told him how to take it. But he still loved her and desperately wanted to feel close again.
I gave them a safe place to talk and set them homework: forget sex, hold hands, grieve together. Three weeks later they walked in holding hands. They'd failed their homework, twice.
That night I told my husband I was going back to university to study sexology. The rest is history.
I couldn’t keep watching that happen. So, I built Restorative Health Clinic.
Restorative Health Clinic (RHC) is a nurse practitioner-led men’s health clinic. We started in Perth Australia and now have rooms country areas and in other states, along with worldwide telehealth so that every man and their partner has the same access.
What makes RHC different is time and honesty. Sexual recovery isn’t a five-minute consult. It’s medication, devices, injections, pelvic floor work, hormones, mental health, and relationship counselling. We always ask about the couple or desire to be in a couple. There is little to gained by restoring intimacy in one person alone if they are in a relationship.
Everything we do is evidence-based. I was an invited reviewer for the international clinical guidelines on prostate cancer survivorship and I’m an inaugural member of the Movember Sexual Health Advisory Committee.
The podcast and YouTube channel were my answer to assisting more men and their partners to answer questions that are difficult to ask.
The Penis Project started because I think there is nothing more powerful than hearing a real persons lived experience. I was also struck by how little most people know about sexual health and how their body functions. This led me to realise that this information is not readily available in plain language. So, I started recording patient stories (with their permission of course). I talk with survivors, partners, clinicians, sexologists and researchers about the thing’s men Google at 2am and are too afraid to ask their doctor.
My YouTube channel is providing education around what products to use and how the body works and how to assist with healing it or working with the changes and still have intimacy. Explainers on penile rehabilitation, Peyronie’s disease, continence recovery and more.
Some of the most meaningful messages I get are from partners who listened to a podcast and finally understood what their loved one was going through.
Not everyone is ready to book a consult, and not everyone needs one straight away. That’s why I’ve developed structured programs and a Resource Library that walk men and couples through recovery step by step from understanding what’s happening in the body to knowing which options are worth pursuing and when.
The online programs are designed to help men and their partners work through information and healing at their own pace, wherever they're located. This makes them especially valuable for men in rural or remote areas, who can avoid the need for frequent trips to appointments. We currently offer an Erectile Dysfunction Program, a Prostate Cancer Penile Rehabilitation Program and a Peyronie's Disease Program. Once purchased, men have lifetime access, so they can revisit the material and rewatch or reread content whenever they need to.
Our Resource Library provides free resources including patient handouts, videos and recordings of webinars not available on YouTube.
I’m also writing a book on prostate cancer survivorship and sexual recovery, so watch this space. My aim of the book is to provide knowledge, a plan to follow and support.
It’s not the anatomy. It’s the couple.
I’ve watched a man in his seventies cry because he could hold his wife again without feeling like a failure. I’ve seen partners realise the distance they’d felt wasn’t rejection, it was shame. When you give people the information, the treatment and the permission to talk about it, relationships come back to life. That never stops being extraordinary to me.
Men’s sexual health is still treated as a punchline or a secret, and both of those keep couples apart. I want to be the person who says the awkward thing first, so that the men and partners I work with don’t have to.
When I’m not in the clinic or behind a microphone, you’ll usually find me on a boat somewhere in the ocean, or in the garden. Both are good reminders that recovery of any kind takes patience, the right conditions, and someone willing to tend to it.
If any of this sounds familiar in your own relationship, please don’t wait years the way so many couples do. Start the conversation. And if you need help finding the words, that’s exactly what myself and the rest of the team at Restorative Health Clinic are here for.
