An Open Letter to Dan Savage
Dear Mr. Savage,
I read your response to I Miss Her Boobs with dismay. You were honest in your inability to give good advice, but your answer rested on the assumption that this is just a sexual/cosmetic/emotional issue, when in fact it could be one of pure survival - the wife not wanting to extend the life-and-death struggle that all cancer patients go through.
The fact is, getting implants after a mastectomy is highly risky; complication rates for mastectomy patients are very high. One study shows that 46 percent of patients getting implants will need more surgery within three years of their reconstruction; numbers from similar reports (here and here, to start) show the same. Rather than bitterness towards the idea of breasts, I bet Mrs. I Miss Her Breasts is just happy to be alive and hopes never to see the inside of an operating room again.
Mr. Savage, I do feel sympathy for both husband and wife in this situation. Both are in mourning: he for her breasts and she for the security of a life without the specter of cancer. His wife has obviously been through some trauma and pain, and so has he. After something like cancer, both would want to be able to get their lives back on the track to normalcy, and of course that includes their sex lives. Now, however, both halves of this couple are in a different place than they were before, and dealing with this transition is never easy.
My personal experience underscores how difficult it is to get to a win-win situation out of something like this. As I underwent surgery after surgery to get breast implants that didn’t work, time after time, my husband felt my pain and discomfort to such an extent that he begged me not to try again after the second implant failure, the third implant failure and then the fourth implant failure. Yes, I had used eight implants. It was terribly upsetting to him that I was so sick because he thought I was only getting implants to please him. As we talked about it – and we talked a lot over that year and a half of constant surgery – breast implants were my way of trying to triumph over a disease that left me disfigured. Breast implants to him represented one step after another of chronic illness and he wanted me any way I was, as long as I was alive and not ill from implants and surgery.
Ultimately, I stopped trying implants and had natural tissue transfer surgery, which provided me with breasts I was pretty happy with. Perfecting nipple reconstruction and shape adjusting took a few more surgeries and with each surgery I could see that my relationship with my husband had become more strained. All he wanted was the security of my having a long life to share with him and he was offended that I thought that breasts were so important to him that I would risk so much discomfort and our relationship just to have them. It took a lot of time for us to heal our differences. And during that time we enjoyed finding other ways to please each other. That part was a wonderful journey for both of us and ultimately led to a complete recovery of our relationship. We’ve been married for over 46 years.
I hope that this couple talks to each other more so that the husband can fully understand why his wife doesn’t want to reconstruct. Whether this man likes it or not, breast cancer is now a part of this marriage. The compromise here shouldn’t be to accept a non-existent sex life but to embrace a new one. In time, exploring newer, more creative sexual activities may help him not miss those breasts so much. I know how possible this is, because I’ve been there.
Sincerely,
Sybil Goldrich
Sybil…what a wonderful response to Dan Savage! I was impressed with the fact that Mr. Savage admitted that he was shaken by the quiry and did not automatically agree with the husband’s thinking.
Below is what I sent off to the editor of the Village Voice….
“Breast Cancer Claims My Wife’s Boobs” The post on Dan Savage’s 3/18/08 column.
WOW…did this strike a nerve with me!! I was only 25 years old when I was diagnoised with breast cancer followed by a mastectomy. I was single at the time and in the years that followed I never encountered a man that told me he did not want to be with me romantically. I admire his wife for accepting her new body and battle scars. Breast cancer with radiation,chemo, and mastectomy is no easy trip. Breast reconstruction surgery is often a longer more difficult trip and the outcome, especially for cancer patients is often less than desirable. If the initial reconstruction is not difficult enough, there is a very high rate of local complications for breast cancer patients, often resulting in multiple corrective surgeries. I speak from experience as I have been down the reconstruction path. If this man loves his wife, he needs to love her as she is, not force her into having UNNECESSARY surgery just to please him in bed. If the scars bother him he can ask her wear sexy teddies to bed.
Comment by Pam Noonan Saraceni — March 22, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
I read this story that you wrote to and if this husband is acting this way it is atrocious and if the advice he gets is the garbage I read we have gotten no where in 2008. A woman who has just suffered breast cancer needs her hubands support not his whining about her breasts if he married her for that he needs to be dumped.
To even advice breast implants to make him feel better is rotten advice, it is her body, her cancer, her life it does not belong to a husband. If he looks at her like a boy he is a jerk, and this story bothered me to no end because my husband had said exactly the same thing to me when I had a bilateral mastectomy and we are know longer together because I came to realize it was not the breasts but him in general and breasts or no breasts he was an idiot.
It is a shame that breast implants is the advice with how much info we have gotten out over the years but then again when it comes to mens egos why not suggest it after all he isn’t the one who is having them put in.
I congratulate this woman for liking her body with the way it looks I wish I had not opted for reconstruction because 19 operations later it is gross to look at and would of been better with just the initial mastectomy done.
Comment by sandra hunt — March 22, 2008 @ 5:10 pm
Sybil,
Most of all, thank you for your open sharing of how this journey has impacted your own marriage. This is the type of honesty breast cancer women need to hear.
I was diagnosed with BC at the age of 27 and underwent a Halstead radical mastectomy. That has been 33 years ago and I thank God every day for the extra years.
When my husband and I married, I only had one breast. Little did I know that God had sent me a one-eyed man who understood the loss and loved me as I was. However, I did not understand that gift and let slick doctors and society make me believe I wasn’t good enough as I was. So many years of wasted time being sick and trying to undo or redo the mistake I made with going through reconstruction. My poor husband blamed hiself for letting me make this decision, yet in 1980, there was almost no information on the success and failures of implants and reconstruction surgeries.
The best lesson we can all learn is to love ourselves as we are, including the scars of life from mastectomies.
God bless you, Sybil.
Pam
Comment by Pam Dowd — March 28, 2008 @ 12:53 pm