My breast cancer and my sexual dysfunction
midwesterner
August 29, 2010 at 5:32 am
This story is being written by the luckiest woman in the world. I met my husband when we were both fifteen. We went to college together and we were married in 1955. We have four great sons and eleven grandchildren.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in September of 2006. After a biopsy and an MRI, it was determined that the right breast should be removed and replaced immediately with a silicone mammary prothesis. Everything went very well and there were no complications.
I was put on medication to take the estrogen out of my system. It was the end of sex as I knew it and the counselors called it “the elephant in the living room” because NO ONE talked about it. My terrific husband said that he understood and that we could work it out!
One morning while I was in the kitchen a television program was airing called “Mike and Juliet in the morning”. The guest was Dr. Irwin Goldstein saying that sex does not have to end with a mastectomy. I went to my computer and looked up his phone number in California.
The next week we flew to San Diego and met Dr. Goldstein and the rest is history. The treatment was successful beyond my imagination!!! I just celebrated me seventy-fifth birthday and sex is better than it has ever been in my life. I don’t even have to worry about getting pregnant!
MT
August 29, 2010 at 6:20 am
Ongoing trials for breast cancer and fsd
The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) is conducting a pilot trial evaluating the safety and tolerability of the ESTRING or 1% testosterone cream administered vaginally for 12 weeks as treatment for vaginal dryness and/or decreased libido in post-menopausal women receiving an AI for Stage I-III breast cancer . The primary objective is to evaluate safety by determining whether an unacceptable number of patients receiving either of these treatments experience an elevation of serum estradiol level outside of the post-menopausal range at several time points. This study will also objectively evaluate changes in vaginal epithelium over the 12 week treatment period and will explore whether either of these treatments are effective in improving gynecologic or sexual quality of life in this patient population.
The North Central Cancer Treatment Group (NCCTG) is currently conducting a randomized placebo controlled phase III trial to evaluate the efficacy and toxicities associated with pilocarpine, a non-selective muscarinic receptor agonist in the parasympathetic nervous system, as treatment for vaginal dryness in post-menopausal women either with a history of breast cancer or who do not want to take vaginal estrogen for a fear of increased risk of breast cancer.
