Cancer and sex: “I felt like I had a chastity belt”

When Cait Wilde was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 17, her sex life was high on the list of things to worry about. But after receiving treatment, when she was ready to return to intimate relationships, she suffered pain, discomfort, and embarrassment, and did not know where to turn for help.

Warning: this article contains adult topics.

Cait, from Manchester, England, had a type of blood cancer called acute myeloid leukemia.

Describes her pre-cancer sex life as “pretty crazy” but during chemotherapy doctors warned her that sex could be really dangerous.

About 46% of young people with cancer say the disease has negatively affected their sex lives, compared to an average of 37% for all age groups, according to studies by the health care charity Macmillan Cancer Support. .

Nearly 2,400 people between the ages of 15 and 24 are diagnosed with cancer annually in the UK, according to the most recent data from Cancer Research UK, a British research foundation.

“A chastity belt”

The treatment left Cait with a low platelet count. Not having enough platelets means that if you have a small cut or tear in your skin, which can occur during sex, your blood will not clot and you will continue to bleed.

“It was like he was wearing a hypothetical chastity belt,” Cait tells the BBC.

As he watched his college friends “jealous” hanging out with others, Cait was struggling with various side effects of her illness and treatment, including alopecia, weight fluctuation, and severe bone pain..

She lost interest in sex during chemotherapy, but after a successful bone marrow transplant, “certain sensations started to return” and Cait wanted to restart her sex life.

But when he tried to masturbate one night, he experienced “discomfort and pain.”

“I felt devastated”

Cait didn’t know it at the time, but her chemotherapy and radiation treatments caused her body to go into a chemical menopause.

One of the many possible symptoms of menopause is vaginal atrophy, in which the vagina becomes thinner and drier, making sex uncomfortable.

But no one had informed him that this could happen to him, so he felt “completely in the dark.”

“I thought, ‘This isn’t as fun as I remember it anymore,'” says Cait.

She had just started to feel ready to go out again, but the bad experience took away her confidence, imagining that she would have to explain to everyone she was in a relationship with that she couldn’t have sex.

“I felt, somehow, devastated. It made me quite embarrassed,” she says.

Cait was so embarrassed that did not speak to anyone for months about what had happened to him.

But eventually “by chance” she learned that a nurse at the transplant site had started a women’s health clinic, which Cait supported.

“At the end of that date I left there with much more confidence,” he says.

“I had to rediscover everything, but I was able to do it in an informed and much more confident way.”

• “I thought I was too young to have breast cancer”
• What is hypoactive sexual desire and what can be done to treat it

“I felt so ugly”

• “I thought I was too young to have breast cancer”
• What is hypoactive sexual desire and what can be done to treat it

“A chastity belt”

The treatment left Cait with a low platelet count. Not having enough platelets means that if you have a small cut or tear in your skin, which can occur during sex, your blood will not clot and you will continue to bleed.

“It was like he was wearing a hypothetical chastity belt,” Cait tells the BBC.

As he watched his college friends “jealous” hanging out with others, Cait was struggling with various side effects of her illness and treatment, including alopecia, weight fluctuation, and severe bone pain..

She lost interest in sex during chemotherapy, but after a successful bone marrow transplant, “certain sensations started to return” and Cait wanted to restart her sex life.

But when he tried to masturbate one night, he experienced “discomfort and pain.”

“I felt devastated”

Cait didn’t know it at the time, but her chemotherapy and radiation treatments caused her body to go into a chemical menopause.

One of the many possible symptoms of menopause is vaginal atrophy, in which the vagina becomes thinner and drier, making sex uncomfortable.

But no one had informed him that this could happen to him, so he felt “completely in the dark.”

“I thought, ‘This isn’t as fun as I remember it anymore,'” says Cait.

She had just started to feel ready to go out again, but the bad experience took away her confidence, imagining that she would have to explain to everyone she was in a relationship with that she couldn’t have sex.

“I felt, somehow, devastated. It made me quite embarrassed,” she says.

Cait was so embarrassed that did not speak to anyone for months about what had happened to him.

But eventually “by chance” she learned that a nurse at the transplant site had started a women’s health clinic, which Cait supported.

“At the end of that date I left there with much more confidence,” he says.

“I had to rediscover everything, but I was able to do it in an informed and much more confident way.”

• “I thought I was too young to have breast cancer”
• What is hypoactive sexual desire and what can be done to treat it

“I felt so ugly”

Jack Fielding also found it “embarrassing and uncomfortable” to ask his health care team for advice on sex after he was diagnosed with a type of sarcoma known as MPNST.

When Jack, 26, from the city of Bolton, began losing weight and hair during his treatment in 2019, he felt like “part of who he was” was gone.

“My self-esteem was badly hit,” he told the BBC.

“It made me feel almost like an alien. I looked in the mirror and couldn’t recognize myself“.

“Thinking of being naked in front of someone back then gave me a lot of anguish because I felt so ugly.”

The Macmillan Cancer Support Foundation notes that cancer can affect your sex life in many ways, including:

The British National Health Service (NHS) suffers from a “lack of resources” in psychosexual therapySo many people have to pay for a private consultation if they want help, according to Caroline Lovett, a cancer therapist who is part of a “small group” of such employees.

“Having to go through puberty thinking about your sexual well-being is difficult enough, but if you are a teenager living with cancer you may feel more alone,” he explains.

Dr Richard Simcock agrees that specialty therapy offerings are “very inconsistent” across the UK.

Macmillan Cancer Support’s cancer physician and clinical advisor indicates that the NHS could benefit from having more specialists because the problems faced by people like Cait and Jack are not always addressed.

“We need to make sure that healthcare professionals are trained to address those questions tactfully, but also trained to know that they can answer those questions,” he says.

Cait has started a campaign to improve counseling and information about sex and people with cancer and has worked with other young survivors to edit a magazine about their sexual stories.

“Although we are revealing a lot of information, it is our experiences, and we want to encourage people to be more honest,” he says.

“I don’t want people to stay in the dark like it happened to me.”

Cait and Jack’s testimonies were related to the BBC Newsbeat radio program.

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