After a cancer experience, a person needs to reclaim each area of their life, including their sexuality. Once a diagnosis has been made and treatment is underway, it is important to rediscover feelings of sexuality and intimacy. There is great symbolism in illness and you may not feel like the same person you were before. Your sense of self-esteem or your self-image, which is how you see yourself and how you function or act, may also be changed. To rediscover your feelings about being a sexual person, information must be given and questions answered. Sexual problems come up quite often (from 20% to 100% in cancer patients) but frequently do not get addressed by healthcare professionals.²⁷ You need to know whether anything about you as a sexual person will be or has been changed, due to the disease itself or because of treatment, which would affect any of the four phases of sex: desire, excitement, orgasm, and resolution.

Information in this section will speak to many of your personal worries that have to do with an intimacy problem with a specific type of cancer, and will help you realize that there can be feelings of embarrassment. Many of you will feel glad to be able to resume a loving and close relationship with your partner. And if you do not have a partner nor wish to have a partner, it is important to understand that your sense of who you are as a woman or a man may often be shown in other relationships such as being close friends with another person or in a grandparent-grandchild relationship. All deserve to be recognized and help us feel alive.

Talking with others is an important part of coping, not only with the cancer diagnosis, but also with the effects of treatment that may cause a change in how you view yourself as a woman or a man. If you have a partner, it has been noted in cancer books and articles that a relationship or marriage that is strong before diagnosis and treatment usually will remain so afterward. Those with supportive partners who communicate well tend to resume their normal patterns after the first crisis (the new diagnosis of cancer) has passed. What is most important is that you and whomever you are close to communicate wants and needs to each other as you travel this challenging journey together.

Information provides a way to help patients and families gain control of a disease process that often seems to be invading every part of their life. Please supplement this information by asking questions or by talking with your nurse or other healthcare provider to obtain the resources you need to successfully face sexual dysfunction.