Dating with cancer

Dating With Cancer. All is NOT fair in love and war. BY Jen Sotham. PUBLISHED April 24, Jen Sotham is a freelance journalist and screenwriter/director.
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For more on the series, click here. When she landed her first gig, she didn't care that it didn't come with health insurance. She was just happy to be working. If a health crisis came up, she figured she'd go to a free clinic. Four years later, Felder's career was on track, and she was happily single and dating.

When she secured a job with health insurance in , she scheduled a routine gynecologist visit for a long overdue exam and pap smear. The test turned up cancerous cells on her cervix, and she was diagnosed with advanced-stage cervical cancer. Felder underwent a procedure that removed her uterus, cervix and part of her vagina, leaving her with her ovaries.


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That was followed by a month and a half of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. After treatment, she was left with bad radiation burns, a crooked butt crack "It's like a question mark almost," she says and an inability to have children. She can still have sex, but her vagina is only two inches long.

Dating website for cancer patients

The self-described "boy-crazy social butterfly" quickly retreated from the social scene, falling into a deep depression. Dating was off the table.

Each year, some 70, young adults in the U. While cancer at any age can be devastating, this group finds themselves battling a sometimes deadly disease at the same time they're asserting their independence in ways both big and small: When it comes to finding love, in particular, having cancer takes so many of the issues that singles face -- body image, sexual experience, self-esteem and the task of explaining one's personal history -- and amplifies them.

A commitment to not settling

The Insider's Guide to Cancer in Your 20s and 30s , who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at age That doesn't necessarily mean young cancer patients need to hit the pause button on dating, but it can be more complicated. Like anyone else in the midst of a traumatic life event, experts say, they should be cautious about pushing themselves to date before they're ready, despite cultural and familial pressures to marry and have children.

Rosenthal -- who dated and ultimately married her husband during her yearslong battle with thyroid cancer -- says patients and survivors, much like their healthy counterparts, need to be honest with themselves about what they're really looking for: If an individual doesn't know or if a sick person is likely to mistake her own neediness for feelings of love, it may be best to hold off on dating altogether. Although, Rosenthal points out, fate can override such decisions: If someone meets the right person, even after deciding on a dating hiatus, he shouldn't necessarily dismiss that person on principle.

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Complicating matters further, Rosenthal says, cancer patients can sometimes have trouble relating to a healthy partner. Diagnosis and treatment can create a bubble of sorts, and they might be shocked to see others worrying about trivial things when they've been focused on the enormous task of staying alive. When patients do opt to date, Rosenthal suggests setting clear boundaries: Obviously, health and treatment take priority over a hot night out.

Making that choice can take self-awareness and discipline -- and support. Sometimes the best advice comes from other patients in the form of online or in-person support groups. My parents might tell me something, but they're my parents," says Bradley Zebrack, associate professor of social work at the University of Michigan, whose research focuses primarily on adolescents and young adults with cancer.

Inevitably, some patients and survivors end up dating each other, taking comfort in someone who can commiserate. Certain online dating sites even promise to do the matchmaking. But Rosenthal cautions that while she certainly wouldn't rule out a mate with cancer, it's hard enough to make a relationship work when one partner is diagnosed with the disease.

While receiving treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Felder recalls meeting one young married couple in their mid to late 20s. The wife was there for every one of her husband's treatments, Felder says. But Felder eventually realized she had to accept herself as a cancer patient before anyone else could. It took Felder about a year before she was even comfortable flirting and months after that until she could think about dating. Her first trip back to happy hour was difficult.


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After a series of bad dates, including one in which she nervously chatted the whole time about cancer "I never heard from him again" and another in which a man asked her if not being able to have children meant she was up for spontaneous sex "Ah, no" , Felder eventually built her confidence back up.

Self-esteem problems aren't confined to women, of course. Jonny Imerman, founder of the cancer support group Imerman Angels in Chicago, was diagnosed with testicular cancer at age He had his testicle removed and underwent chemotherapy. When he was 28, the cancer recurred with four tumors in his abdomen, which were surgically removed.

When his scans were finally clear, he says, his confidence had hit a "0. Despite a very supportive network of family and friends, Imerman says, he craved the comfort of a steady relationship. Two months out of chemo, he rushed into a serious relationship. But as his confidence started increasing post-cancer, he realized she might have been the perfect fit for "Chemo Jonny," but not for cancer-free Jonny. She was an introverted movie buff, which worked well when he was still exhausted from treatment, but as he started to get his old energy back, he realized their temperaments weren't aligned.

A cancer diagnosis isn't always a social disadvantage. At 25, Reiser was misdiagnosed several times "For like three weeks, I thought I was going to die," he says , before his doctors concluded that he had a large cancerous tumor wrapped around his spine. One area of his life that didn't take a hit was dating. But while cancer didn't necessarily hurt his social life, it did kill his sex life. Cancer can take a profound toll on sexual health, says Sage Bolte, a licensed clinical social worker and an oncology counselor for the Life with Cancer program at Inova Cancer Services in Fairfax, Va.

In her own work, she's found nearly everyone experiences some impact on sexual function, whether because of direct effects of the disease on a sex organ or because of treatment side effects, such as extreme vaginal dryness, shifting hormone levels, exhaustion or changes to the skin due to radiation.

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An altered self-image after cancer can also affect sexuality. On top of that, young adulthood is usually a time of sexual experimentation, learning what and whom we like and don't like.

Here’s Everything I Learned Dating with Breast Cancer

Sex may be good, perhaps even better than before cancer, she adds, but it will always be different -- either because the body has changed so much or because there are lasting psychological effects, and sometimes both. My dating profile says a lot about me: Absent from the list: In some ways, I liken it to other non-cancer-related health issues that come up in relationships, like sexually transmitted infections or depression. But when do folks talk about their sexual history and mental health? Where is that balance between revealing too much information too soon and waiting too long to disclose an essential part of yourself?

One of my boobs is fake. Finally, there are all of the typical dating questions that come up in your 30s—kids, marriage, and the rest of the details about spending your lives together. The question of whether I want kids is complicated by my concerns about genetics and the possibility of recurrence. The trick is to find—and be—someone who is self-aware enough to own their unique set of experiences and is present enough to see the person in front of them for who they are: Green known outside of FD as Liz is a thirty-something teacher, professional development coordinator, and trainer in the Washington, DC area who finds any and every excuse to soak up some sunshine.

In her spare time, she can be found on the yoga mat, on a hiking trail, in a kayak, or cooking up a scrumptious vegan meal for family and friends. Your email address will not be published. Back in the game: