Couples Dancing with Cancer Together

Love in the Time of Cancer is all about how couples cope with cancer. We talk about how to keep love, intimacy and sex alive while your partner goes through a cancer diagnosis and treatments. So the article in yesterday's New York Times is a wonderful addition to our conversation.

The only downside is the insistence on the war metaphor...maybe we could start a change here. How about "Dancing Cancer Together" instead of battling? Wouldn't the metaphor of dancing do more to help couples with cancer? And yes, even dancers trip and fall and get out of step but there are also moments of flow and beauty and dancers seek a mutual rhythm.

Let's think more about this idea of "Dancing with Cancer". But for today here is the very helpful piece from the Well at The New York Times.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/facing-cancer-together/?smid=pl-share

Sex and Cancer and Young Patients

Oh, I am so excited to discover another woman writing about sex and cancer. Sadly this is a young woman--25 years old--with cancer and as is perfectly appropriate for 25 she is talking to her gal pals about sex. But this is not Sex and The City. It's more like Sex and The Chemo. And crazy frustrating they are still not getting good info on sex and cancer.

But this young woman--Suleika Jaquad--is a writer and advocate and she's writing a blog for the New York Times. Here is the link to her column this week. Take a look. Send it to friends. Send this to your oncologist and to your cancer support group too. Lets make them talk about sex!

Click Here:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/life-interrupted-crazy-unsexy-cancer-tips/?smid=pl-share

Affordable Health Care Act

Here is  a new column called "Bedside" in the New York Times --about nursing and healthcare. This first article by Theresa Brown --an oncology nurse--details how changes to The Affordable Care Act impact cancer treatment.

Take a quick look.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/money-or-your-life/?smid=pl-share

Infidelity Keeps Us Together

That’s the title of yesterday’s cover story in the New York Times magazine. Mark Oppenheimer writes about sex columnist Dan Savage and Savage’s suggestion that marriages need less fidelity and more flexibility. Basically what Savage is suggesting is that monogamy isn’t quite natural and that we do relationships a disservice by pretending or insisting that absolute monogamy be the standard.

What’s good is that Savage is not espousing secrets or affairs or running around—rather he’s advocating for talking to your partner before, after, and during marriage to say, “This is who I really am; what I really want; and “Will you still love me if I need to try this out?” In a way, he’s talking about a very high form of commitment.

But just the title and then reading the article was disturbing. (Click on the link below to read the article). Right away I found myself asking, “What if John said he needed something –some kind of sexual experience—I couldn’t offer or even try?” Would I love him enough to say, “Ok, go be you?”

I doubt it.

In the article other experts on sex and marriage weigh in to say that some open marriages work but most do not—not because of the sex but because of the emotions and the dishonesty—again, not the dishonesty of the partner who needs to go outside the relationship but the dishonesty of the partner who agrees or acquiesces and then realizes they really are not OK with that.

But then the bigger and more personal question to myself is this: Do I have the right to want and insist on monogamy and fidelity in our marriage? This is a marriage that came to be from infidelity—so did I forfeit my rights by marrying a man who left his wife? Or do we painfully know just how high the cost is and not wish that on ourselves or on any others?

Reading this article provoked a deep and daring conversation with John about our love life and our sex life and our intellectual lives—and how we keep all of those alive so we can keep things fresh and exciting. And what it means to be sexually “good, giving and game” in a monogamous marriage.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/magazine/infidelity-will-keep-us-together.html