Illness and Sexuality

I asked Kill last night if my family would feel weird if I posted on the subject of sex. He said "Cail, you're family is really progressive so you'll probably be okay. Although, it would be nice if you had more followers who were cancer patients themselves so it wouldn't seem like you're writing about sex solely to your family". He's totally correct, but I just don't want to wait and post about this later and we have followers in Oceania and the US which can't solely be my two American family members! This blog has had 1,039 views last month so I'm comfortable that it's not just my family :).

When you're ill, post surgery or after a major trauma, like maybe childbirth, you often look different or feel different and that affects The Sex. Either way, in optimal conditions, sex is something that human beings do and we do it well. But what about when the conditions are not optimal? Like when your house is filthy, you have noisy kids, smelly dogs, annoying roommates, are post-operative, have dandruff or have bad vision and cannot tell if you've shaved your entire leg when you're in the shower? I swear that all of those don't apply to me! I also wonder about when people say that "you're loved ones are looking out for you from beyond" if they see you having sex and then I ask myself "why would it matter if they did?" You're dead family members are probably happy when you have sex, I'm sure.

Now that we've started talking about it, I think that you should encourage your partner to interact with the part of your body that you feel sad about. For example, I have 2 tumours in my left breast and for a while I didn't want Kill to touch them. After awhile he also started touching them in a medical way, to decide if they'd grown, which didn't make me feel like a sexy woman. So I finally decided that by restricting his access, I was only making the situation weird and I encouraged him to touch my breasts but not for tumour checking purposes. After I get my mastectomies I will still want him to touch my chest, even if it seems awkward at first.  I don't want Kill to worry that surgery will make me feel asexual. Sex is an important part of a healthy relationship and living a fruitful life, so I will work hard in order to make it good!

The other thing that I've noticed is that when I'm honest with other cancer patients they feel comfortable with being candid about sex. This means that most of the time I break-the-ice by bringing up sex. I have this friend who is so beautiful and she's trying to maintain her sexuality but she did chemo and went through the requisite menopause that often accompanies it. I told her about the product Replens (which I held off buying for months before I gave in) but now I find it to be a lovely way to create long lasting moisture in the lady bit area. Any lady or man whose partner has experienced menopause will know about the dryness side effect. She was all for it and I felt way better to have mentioned it. It turns out that we're not alone and what we're going through isn't weird. We all just want to be attractive and have someone want us for our minds and for our bodies too. I will be forever grateful to Kill that he still found me attractive even when I looked like an Oompa Loompa and my skin smelt like lava after chemo. You just can't repay someone for that kind of kindness but he is absolutely the man I want to marry :).

By the way, I'm pretty sure that no one will have the guts to comment on this post so don't worry!