Sex and Cancer: Your Intimate Questions Answered

                One side effect of cancer is bad writing.  I do not mean bad amateur writing, like this blog for example, because at least most of the amateur writing I’ve found has a certain amount of honesty and personal experience in it.  No, I mean bad writing by professionals.  The cancer community, as it likes to call itself, is just bloated with bad writing.

                As you can tell by walking through any grocery store during October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, there is plenty of money to be made in Cancer Land. Potato chips for the Cure?  Pink breath mints?  This month our local Giant store is full of large signs that say, “Fill your cart for the Cure,” with big pink ribbons, and they piss me off every time I go in there. Well, the geniuses that run the world of publishing have also figured out there is money to be made, here.  They are pumping out cancer magazines like the Duggars pump out babies.  They are full of ads from pharmaceutical companies. And most of the writing is really, really lame.

                They have racks full of these publications at every cancer doctor’s office I’ve been to. I end up reading this dreck because I am a compulsive reader and I have already read every other printed material they have there that doesn’t have the word “golf” in the title.

                This week, I just have to vent. The headline on the most recent stack of cancer magazines says, “Sex and Cancer:  YOUR INTIMATE QUESTIONS ANSWERED.” Of course, every shred of information is geared toward persons above the age of 60, because that’s where the money is.  The frisky old cancer patients in the cover photo look as if they might actually want to kiss each other, and then it would be Katie-bar-the-door. But worse, almost every paragraph in the story is insipid.

                Did you know, for instance, that missing body parts, such as breasts or prostate glands, might affect your self-image or your sexual desire?

                Did you know that chemotherapy dries out every part of you that is supposed to be moist? (We can sell you some products to help with this, by the way. We got ads for this stuff in our cancer magazine.)

                Did you know that:

                                --You might be experiencing some degree of tiredness.

                                --You might be experiencing some stress.

                                --You might be experiencing some pain. And if you are, and if you’re getting high as a                                    kite on your pain meds, you might also be experiencing some libido issues.

                It breaks my heart that they killed perfectly good trees to make paper to print this stuff. I am sure someone got paid a lot of money to write this.  Why wasn’t it me? I would have taken their money, and I could have sucked the whole thing out of my thumb. Here is an actual quote from this magazine:

                “Try timing intimacy when you feel your best. For instance, before your next course of chemotherapy; in the morning when you’ve rested, or just after taking your pain medication, but before you’re too sleepy.”

                Gee, we hadn’t thought of that.

                I can confirm that chemotherapy is really bad for hot sex, unless your partner enjoys sex with unconscious persons, or persons who are hallucinating about soccer games or copper mines or whatever.  In that case, I would say go for it right in the middle of your chemo.  I would say wait until just after they hit you up with a boatload of Ativan.

                Hell, I could have given them lots of tips on cancer sex. Here are a few more:

·         You will need a robust sense of humor.

·         You will need a partner who has a robust sense of humor, and is not a jerk. Do not attempt this with a humorless asshole. (Query: you of all people know that life is short; why are you still with a humorless asshole, anyway?)

·         If you have a humor-enabled, kind partner who likes you, and has waited around while you’re doing chemo, for, say, three or four months, until the nausea has worn off enough that you would consider having sex with someone, lucky you! By now, that person probably won’t give a damn what you look like. So throw those silly self-image issues out the window.

·         Chocolate martinis. Tasty and expeditious. Have a couple.

                Enough of this.  We are about to veer off into Too Much Information, and my mom is probably reading this, anyway, and here we’ve already visited sex, drugs, alcohol, and foul language!  If you are personally experiencing a cancer sex crisis, just call me up on the phone.  We’ll talk.