How do men screw up when their wife or girlfriend is diagnosed with breast cancer? Let me count the ways.
Some play the denial game: work late, hole up in the den, pretend nothing's different. Others prefer the take-charge route, figuring if they can mend other stuff, they can "fix" cancer. Good luck with that, buddy!
Marc Silver and wife Marsha, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001. After multiple treatments, she's "feeling good."
(Ralph Alswang - Courtesy of Marc Silver)
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They take to brooding. Or they want their wives to be relentlessly upbeat. How dare she be pessimistic? Didn't the doctor say she has a 90 percent chance of living five more years!
The guys don't do enough around the house; they do too much around the house because it's easier to wash the dishes than to sit down and ask their wife how she's feeling.
They want to have sex even when she's feeling lousy after surgery or in the midst of chemotherapy. Or else they're afraid to flirt, which makes her feel sexless.
Believe me, I know all the mistakes, because I've been there and done that.
In August 2001, my wife, Marsha, called me at work with the news that she had been handed a near-diagnosis by a blunt radiologist, who eyeballed a mammogram and said, "Sure looks like cancer to me." I instinctively knew just the wrong thing to say: "Ew, that doesn't sound good." Then, instead of rushing home to her side, I signed off with, "See you tonight."
Well, at least I avoided sports metaphors. One breast cancer survivor told me her boyfriend kept saying, "This is the ninth inning, and there are two outs, but we are going to knock this ball out of the park." If there were a breast cancer umpire, he'd toss that guy out of the game.
The medical community is well aware that breast cancer husbands need coaching. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded a $1.1 million grant to Men Against Breast Cancer, a Rockville-based educational and fundraising group, to establish programs to enlighten husbands of newly diagnosed women, focusing on "underserved minority communities." The first sessions will start this fall.
As for my wife and me, we muddled through our year of fighting cancer. Marsha had bilateral breast cancer -- a tumor in each of her "girls." She underwent a pair of lumpectomies, followed by chemotherapy and radiation, and today she is feeling good. Since I wished for a book to help me out during those dark days, I wrote one myself. For all those clueless guys (like me) who need a crash course in caregiving, I have prepared a Cliff's Notes version. Here are nine ways that men mess up -- and how to get it right instead.
Bad response #1: "I know what you need."
