Surviving Husband Pleads

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia—Jon Magnus, a 6′-5″ oak of a man, looked out at his audience here at the 4th World Conference on Breast Cancer—most of whom were women who had survived or were battling breast cancer and its complications—and related in a deep voice etched by sorrow how men such as himself suffer from the impact of breast cancer. “Breast cancer affects sons, brothers, fathers, lovers, husbands,” said Mr. Magnus, an author and the foreign correspondent for VG, the largest newspaper in Norway. In 1999, he lost his wife, Elizabeth, to breast cancer after an arduous 15-month fight for survival—a battle he recorded in diaries and turned into two books that were published in Norway. “Don't forget about the men,” Mr. Magnus said, as he read excerpts from his writings during a plenary session of the meeting. He suggested that doctors find time to include husbands and others who become “next-of-kin”—a title he said that defines not the closest relative but rather the closest caregiver—to the women with breast cancer. He also appealed to women to allow their men to enter their private world of breast cancer and help them endure and overcome the challenges of surgery, chemotherapy, hair loss, and, as may happen, final days. “Often men are shut out of the lives of women with breast cancer, perhaps based on a desperate attempt to spare the pain and fear of breast cancer or simply based on the fact that in some communities breast cancer may be associated with shame and guilt,” he said. “Some women have told me that they can't even tell their male companions about their diagnosis. As women are the primary caregivers many of them feel they are unable to burden the family with their disease.” Help for Survival Suzan Streichenwein, MD, a psychiatrist in West Palm Beach, FL, agreed that the entire family needs to be involved in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. For people who were raised in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, patients with cancer faced stigma, myths, isolation and fear, said Dr. Streichenwein, formerly Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. “Now, not only can the disease be cured in many individuals, but for others cancer can be contained and controlled, almost as if it were a chronic disease.” However, the involvement of all concerned is critical in helping make sure the patient receives the emotional support to take medicines, make appointments, and rest after the exhaustion of radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Dr. Streichenwein recalled that when her close relatives had cancer a generation ago, all the clothes, bedding, and towels used in dressing wounds were discarded in a mistaken fear that the disease was communicable. “We have come a long way since then….but today family members need to understand the disease and how they can all help the patient survive,” she said. Needs for the Soul “You know more about the needs of the soul,” Mr. Magnus said to the women at the conference. “My wife's illness made me powerless; her fear had become our fear; her pain was my pain. “A man is not always able to communicate his love and support because he too is afraid; he too is full of fear and pain both for himself and for his woman. Perhaps he is afraid to hurt her or perhaps he is like most men having trouble talking about feelings. What could have made two lovers even closer together has instead become silence and a wall between them. The life shared between two equal souls is not easy even when both are feeling happy and well. How much more difficult it can be when one of them is ill.” As the audience dabbed eyes with napkins and tissues, Mr. Magnus said, “Close relatives and next of kin are in the same boat as the patient. We feel the pain together; we look for brighter and better days together. We are in it together.” No Time to PrepareFigure: An excerpt that Jon Magnus read from his diary about his wife's breast cancer, dated Jan 2, 1997: “Today you have seen your scar for the very first time, Elizabeth. You asked to see it when they changed your bandage this morning. Where you before had soft and beautiful breasts a bloated scar cried out from the middle of your chest to way back under your arm and you have tears in your eyes when I come to visit. I grab your hand and squeeze it to comfort you. It wasn't your right breast I fell in love with 25 years ago. It was you.”He noted that being next of kin was a job description he was unprepared for. “That role always comes along unexpectedly. “I have used the word ‘next-of-kin’ instead of ‘man’ or ‘husband’ because it isn't necessarily a person in the close family that a doctor or a nurse should relate to in that role,” Mr. Magnus said. “Normally a family is a parent or a spouse or a son or a daughter, but not always. There are other emancipated groups with different lifestyles and different living arrangements. So the family could be a close friend, a colleague at work, a trusted neighbor, or a co-habitant, gay or straight. The family is the person or the persons who the ill wants to represent her and support her during that difficult period.”

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