New research reveals 98% of women coping with breast cancer struggle with intimacy. It’s no wonder, says one woman who has experienced it. Breast cancer runs in my family so I’ve always been vigilant about self-checking.
As soon as I found a lump, in September 2021, I went to the GP. A month later a biopsy confirmed I had grade three, triple negative breast cancer. It wasn’t genetic, just bad luck.
In the month between being diagnosed and starting treatment I genned up about what lay ahead. I learnt that the six month course of chemotherapy I would need, followed by a double mastectomy, would leave me tired and nauseous. I would feel drained and lose my hair.
Yet no one warned me of this: breast cancer kills your sex life. Up until my first chemo “infusion” my sex life was very healthy. Yes, even after the diagnosis four weeks earlier, we were still intimate.
Sex was always an important way we connected and comforted each other. Friends were always surprised (perhaps envious, even) that my husband Sam and I still “did it” twice weekly. Despite having three children, now aged 19, 17 and 11.
We met aged 16 after a school leavers’ party but only married in 2015. Growing up together gave us a mutual trust, we shared the same curiosity and sense of fun in bed. Sex was special, passionate, the constant thread and glue of our marriage.
We were lucky, I know..