Unwelcome to the World of Breast Cancer

Breast Cancer Husband: How to Help Your Wife (and Yourself) during Diagnosis, Treatment and Beyond
by Marc Silver

A unique guide, like none other on the market - packed with medical information, practical tips, psychological insight, and coping strategies - to help men help the women they love through this trying time.

When Marc Silver became a breast cancer husband three years ago, he learned firsthand how frightened and helpless the breast cancer husband feels. He searched in vain for a book that would give him the information and advice he so desperately sought. Now this award-winning journalist has compiled just the kind of emotionally supportive and useful resource that he wished he had been able to consult - to give men the tools they need to help their wives, their families, and themselves through this scary, uncertain time.

Silver draws on his experience as a veteran of the News You Can Use staff at U.S. News & World Report to cover in depth al the issues couples coping with breast cancer will have to face during diagnosis, treatment, and beyond. Highlights include:

• The shared experiences of other breast cancer husbands
• Guidance from top cancer doctors in the country
• Advice on when, how, and what to tell your young children
• Tips on coping with chemotherapy and radiation
• A candid discussion of sex and intimacy

More than 200,000 women are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States. At last, with this book, the men who love them have a road map to help them through a difficult and unprecedented journey.

What to do in those frantic early days

When the news came, I was a husband behaving badly. It was the last Friday of August 2001. The phone in my office rang around 11:00 a.m. My wife's voice, shrouded by cell-phone static, sounded raw and uneasy. I knew she had gone to the doctor for a follow-up mammogram. A reading earlier that week had raised eyebrows. But Marsha, who was 53, had had plenty of callbacks before, and neither of us was particularly nervous about this one. She thought it was a nuisance that she had to run back to the HMO for what undoubtedly would prove to be a false alarm. Needless to say, I didn't bother to go along.

So my wife went in, unsnapped her bra, and placed her naked right breast in the grip of the mammogram machine. The technician gave the image to the radiologist to examine. A few minutes later, the doctor came into the room where Marsha was putting on her clothes, and with six little words catapulted her into the world of breast cancer: "Sure looks like cancer to me."

Deeply distraught, Marsha called me as soon as she was out of the doctor's office. She wanted to share her pain and to seek some husbandly solace. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being truly superb and 1 being utterly inadequate, my reaction deserved, oh, maybe a minus 11. And I'm being a lenient grader. My wife still likes to remind me of my exact (and insipid) words: "Ew, that doesn't sound good."

We spoke for only a few minutes on that balmy summer Friday as we headed into Labor Day weekend-mainly about logistics (because they're a heck of a lot easier to talk about than feelings). Marsha couldn't see a surgeon until Tuesday because of the holiday. Nothing we could do about that. We decided we wouldn't say anything to our two daughters (they were 12 and 15 at the time) until we knew for sure . . . because the doctor could be wrong, right? And then I said something like, "I'll be home at the usual time." What was I thinking? Yes, what was I thinking?

I'm sure that question must have crossed my wife's mind.

"Women always ask what men are thinking about," comedian Jerry Seinfeld says in one of his monologues. "We're thinking about nothing. We're just walking down the street, not thinking about anything." I believe that was my goal at the time. I didn't want to think about anything.

But, truth be told, my mind was working overtime. Deep inside, I was shocked and scared. I may have been 49, but I felt as if I were 14. I didn't know how we'd muddle through the next 3 anxious days until we saw the surgeon. And if the radiologist proved to be correct, I couldn't even begin to imagine how we'd cope in the months ahead.

YOUR FIRST REACTION

Of all the words in the medical lexicon, "cancer" is the most terrifying, says Jim Zabora, Sc.D., a social worker who has counseled cancer patients for years and is now dean of the Catholic University of America's School of Social Service in Washington, D.C. Breast cancer husbands agree 100 percent. "You are absolutely shattered," recalls Stephen Peck of Washington, D.C., whose wife, Gayle, was diagnosed when she was 41. "You can't believe it. Why did she get it? She had no family history, no nothing." A ruddy fellow who'd look at home on a golf course, Stephen recalls, "I absolutely bawled my eyes out. You are in total shock and fear because you don't know what's going to happen."

"It was just like somebody punched me in the gut," says Chicagoan Bob Marovich, 39, who felt the lump in his wife's breast before she was aware of it, kept the secret over a holiday weekend, then told her. After having a biopsy, she went for a follow-up visit to the doctor and got the news that the lump was malignant. That's when she called Bob at the office. "I remember not hearing anything else people had to say at work after I heard the news. I went home, and even though you don't want to jump to conclusions, your emotions do."

There's a term for the swirl of emotions you feel in the days after a cancer diagnosis: "acute stress reaction." The symptoms are "shock, disbelief, and numbness," says Margie Stohner, a licensed clinical social worker and consultant to the psychosocial program at Sibley Memorial Hospital's Center for Breast Health in Washington, D.C.

Though the woman is the one who has the disease, the man in her life is inextricably bound up in the emotions of the moment. "I think it's tough to be the husband," says surgeon Cynthia Drogula, M.D., who is a breast surgeon in Washington, D.C. Breast cancer patients agree. "Women say, 'I think it's harder on my poor husband,'" says Judy Perotti, former director of patient services for Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization, which runs a support hotline for patients and their spouses.

Understandably, nobody asks the husband how he's feeling. All the attention is on the wife, and the husband is just expected to be there for her in some vague, undefined way. The same applies to boyfriends, significant others, fiancés, and long-term companions, all of whom I think of as honorary breast cancer husbands. Guys, this book is for you, too. (Although to keep things simple, I'll be using the terms "husband" and "wife.")

Some men, like me, don't exactly rise to the occasion when the call comes. Like the fellow who said to his newlywed wife, "I thought you were healthy when I married you." Or the husband whose first question to the doctor was, "What do I tell my friends?" Or the man who sat in the doctor's office with a poker face and his arms folded across his chest, clearly signaling that he couldn't wait to get the hell out of there.

Even with the best of intentions, you might make a fool of yourself. Riding home on the bus with his girlfriend not 30 minutes after the doctor gave her the news, Mike Malone was trying to think of a way to take her mind off breast cancer. Mike knew she was interested in buying a car, so he blurted out, "Want to go car shopping?"

The second he said it, he knew it was just about the stupidest thing he'd ever said. "If there's only one time you forget something I said," he told Stacy, "please forget that." In the 3 years since, she's never brought it up. Mike, now 35, gave her the engagement ring sooner than he'd planned. His message to breast cancer husbands: "No matter what, you're going to screw up."

THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS

In the middle of the hectic early days of breast cancer, we somehow missed sending off a credit card payment on time. Sure enough, we got socked with a penalty the next month.

So I called the credit card company and told them the truth: "My wife was just diagnosed with breast cancer, and some of the bills in the house didn't get prompt attention."

The penalty was erased. And a little lightbulb went on. I realized that although breast cancer was playing havoc with our sense of stability and immortality, it had given us something, too. We had the perfect excuse for all our screwups. So we took advantage. I mean, why not? It wasn't as if we were lying.

"I do tell people, the cancer is taking enough away from you-use it to gain stuff," advises Frank McCaffrey, a clinical social worker who counsels breast cancer husbands at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. "Maybe your wife is more likely to get seated at a restaurant when she wears a scarf. If it's going to get you a little something extra, why not? Drop it into conversation. People will feel bad and want to make it up to you. And that's okay."

Marsha and I discovered that a mere mention of the disease is a highly effective way to get an annoying telephone solicitor off the line. It's a powerful weapon when you're fighting, um, negotiating with your health insurer. And when a gift card expires because you couldn't get to the store in the middle of the chemo months, there's nothing wrong with seeing if the manager will show a little breast cancer sympathy.

© 2004 by Marc Silver. All rights reserved. No Part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

About the Author

Marc Silver is an editor at U.S. News & World Report. He has been a guest on the Today show, Good Morning America, and various CNN and CNBC programs, and has contributed freelance stories to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications.