Sexuality and Cancer

Let�s Talk About It! Sexuality and Cancer

by Anne Katz RN PhD

Thanks to dramatic advances in cancer detection and treatment, more people today than ever before are likely to survive cancer and to live many years past their diagnosis and treatment. According to the American Cancer Society, at least 10.5 million Americans with a history of cancer were alive in 2003, and between 1996 and 2002, survival rates were up 51 percent over previous decades. A recent report from the Institute of Medicine, the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and the National Cancer Institute recommends that the needs of cancer survivors must be recognized, and that cancer survivorship must be seen as a distinct phase of cancer care.

It�s in these years of survival, when life goes back to �normal,� when sexual side effects can become common and increasingly problematic for both individuals and couples. Cancer diagnosis and treatment can have a severe and sometimes lasting effect on both sexuality and sexual functioning, and can produce not only physical complications but psychological and emotional ones as well. Breast, gynecologic and prostate cancer are often thought of as the cancers most likely to have sexual consequences, but there are actually universal effects of the cancer experience experienced by patients with all types of cancer.

Cancer affects people and couples of all ages. Immediately after diagnosis, the focus is merely on survival, and people are often unable to contemplate life after treatment or even that a �normal� life is possible. During treatment, patients often don�t feel well enough or don�t feel that they have the right to a sex life in the context of their cancer experience. They often don�t know who to talk to about this, and there are few resources available.

It may seem obvious that sexuality is affected by prostate cancer, breast cancer, and gynecologic cancer. But other kinds of cancer can also have an effect on sexuality and sexual functioning because of treatments that may interfere with energy levels, how the person sees themselves (body image) etc.

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