Life during and after breast cancer treatment

The impact is subsiding. You may smooth surprise yourself one day before long and find you're thinking les about your diagnosis and more about living with breast cancer.

You'd be right: Your focus now should be upon maintaining as normal a life as possible during and after your treatment. individual area you may be grappling with is sexual intimacy. Between the sexual connotations associated with a woman's breasts, side issues of treatment, plus the emotional distress of having cancer, it's no surprise that research finds that about half of all women who have had breast cancer experience long-term sexual riddles (25)

One close attention of 558 women in the year after their breast cancer treatment set about one-fourth simply weren't interested in sex particularly if they'd had chemotherapy. (26) Other reasons for a lack of sexual interest include menopausal symptoms like vaginal drynes and fiery flashes that can result from cancer therapies.

And at the same time now perhaps more than any other time in your life is when you ne to be shut up with someone, both physically and emotionally.

in the way that here's what I suggest: Forget about sex for the instant Instead, focus on intimacy. Massage individual another, hold hands, go upon spontaneous dates. Find ways to bring sensuality into your life--beautiful negligees (several companies make lingerie for women who have had a mastectomy), romantic music, depressed lights. Spend one evening slowly touching each other. Ask your partner to gently touch your scar.

And if your desire for intimacy is affected by the agency of negative feelings about your material part try turning out all the lights before you start.

Communication is essential during this time. Talk about for what cause [i]or[/i] reason you may not feel desire right now. gain your partner to talk about by what mode your diagnosis and treatment has affected him or her. If you have feeling too uncomfortable talking, try writing alphabetic characters in which you tell each other in what manner you feel.

And share your be of importance tos with your health care team who may be able to commend strategies to help you regain the intimacy you've lost

Other Lifestyle Issues

Fatigue is also a major riddle particularly if you're undergoing chemotherapy. Many women also complain about "chemo brain," in which they have feeling like they can't remember anything.

That's on what account you must take care of yourself first. That means napping instead of volunteering; working a shorter schedule during and after treatment; hiring without certain chores, if you can afford it; and plane asking the student down the road to do your grocery shopping.

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It's also a time when I impel you to call upon the family in your life who be fond of you. Most people want to help--they just don't know what to do. thus tell them.

Ask a shut friend to organize a dinner brigade, assigning neighborhood families a night to bring your family dinner. Call upon a friend to drive if you perceive too tired to drive yourself. I know individual woman whose greatest feat was getting the laundry done for her large family--a friend came to her house and made positive it was done and deposit away every week.

And look for out other women with breast cancer, either in a formal or informal support assemblage in person or online. Numerous studies find of that kind support can improve your overall quality of life. (27)

Finally, make time for a certain number of form of exercise every day to help you regain activity as well as confidence in yourself. It may flat help your long-term survival. individual study of 3,000 women with breast cancer place those who got a not many hours of exercise a week were les likely to die of their cancer than women who got les than an hour a week. (28)

To learn more about breast cancer, visit www.healthywomen.org. diocese Take 10 for Breast Cancer Awareness.

References

(25) Ganz PA, Rowland JH Desmond K et al.: Life after breast cancer: understanding women's health-related quality of life and sexual functioning. J Clin Oncol 16 (2): 501-14 1998

(26) Ganz PA, Kwan L Stanton AL, et al. Quality of life at the extremity of primary treatment of breast cancer: first be the effects from the moving beyond cancer randomized trial. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2004;96(5):376-87

(27) Till JE Evaluation of support assemblages for women with breast cancer: importance of the navigator part Heaith Qual Life Outcomes. 2003;1(1):16

(28) Holme MD Chen WY Feskanich D Physical activity and survival after breast cancer diagnosis, JAMA. 2005;293(20):2479-86

through Pamela Peeke, MD, MPH

NWHRC Medical Advisor

Dr Peeke is a slip Foundation Scholar in Nutrition and Metabolism, and Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. She writes about health and lifestyle issues important to all women

COPYRIGHT 2005 National Women's Health Resource Center

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