A Partner's View

When my partner was going through her breast cancer treatment and whenever she had a scare and had to go back to hospital for bloods and scans, I would inwardly panic. What if she dies? What if they didn’t get all of the cancer and it gets past the lymph nodes? Lots and lots of questions, but the answers came slowly; a week to get the results of a scan. During that time I lost sleep, I was really stressed and worried and it wasn’t even my illness! I have been affected more by my partner’s breast cancer than any illness I have ever had. I used to look at her standing in front of the mirror trying to raise her arm a centimetre more than she did the day before and think “how am I supposed to help support her when she has more determination and strength than I do?”

This is a pretty tricky one as we guys are generally useless at asking for help. There are lots of anecdotes to support this comment. For example, when a man’s driving, why does he never ask the way when he’s lost? Society conditions us to be strong, masculine and supportive of the ‘fairer sex’. All the old caveman instincts come rushing to the fore, regardless of the changes affecting society.

Going to one’s GP is for wimps, which presumably is one of the reasons prostate cancer is often only discovered in the latter stages. Contrast that to women who are used to going to their GP, for gynae problems, contraception, childbirth, the children’s illnesses etc.

We seem to think that inner strength means we can’t discuss our worries and concerns, so we bottle it up. I survived of course. Mainly because it wasn’t me that had the life threatening disease, but my concerns about the lack of support for partners of breast cancer patients, stayed with me.

I shared these thoughts, whenever appropriate, which wasn’t often. Not the sort of thing you talk about at work, watching a rugby international or shopping at Tesco.

Two years later, I finally ‘got off my backside’ and volunteered for Partner Support at Breast Cancer Care. I’m halfway through the training, so should anyone be interested, I’ll let you know how I get on. The idea is that I (and others of course) provide telephone support for any partner that wants to ‘just talk to someone’ about their concerns.

And therein lies the rub; you realise that you’re going to have to find the number, dial it and put the phone in his hand don’t you?