When a woman receives a diagnosis of breast cancer, does her husband mask or admit his fear?
If his wife must have a mastectomy, should he advocate for breast reconstruction?
Must he listen patiently as his partner repeats the same concern for the umpteenth time?
When his wife, Marsha Dale, a high school teacher, received a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2001, Marc Silver, an editor at U.S. News & World Report, had no primer for tackling such thorny questions.
His initial response to her diagnosis was callous, Silver says. But as the couple struggled through the process of Dale's diagnosis, treatment and recovery, Silver found his footing as a supportive "breast cancer husband."
His book, Breast Cancer Husband: How to Help Your Wife (and Yourself) Through Diagnosis, Treatment, and Beyond (Rodale, $14.95), is a guide for other men in the same situation as he was in.
"I wanted to write as a guy for guys," says Silver, who lives in Chevy Chase and has two teenage daughters. "There really aren't very many books that talk about the male reaction, and I am convinced men have certain reactions in common."
Men "tend to want to fix things and protect their loved ones," Silver says. "And those aren't always the best instincts to bring into a situation like this."
A National Cancer Institute report estimates that one in eight women in the United States will develop breast cancer during their lifetime. This year, an estimated 216,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in the United States, along with 59,000 cases of noninvasive breast cancer, according to Breastcancer.com, a Web-based information clearinghouse.
Silver and others, such as Dr. Marisa Weiss, founder and president of Breastcancer.org, figure that many of these women have men in their lives who want to help but don't know how.
"I think relationships are really tricky and hard and challenging in general. When breast cancer hits, these relationships become more strained, and it's those very relationships women really, really need," Weiss says.
To be supportive, "men do need a crash course in the disease," says Lillie Shockney, administrative director of the Johns Hopkins Avon Foundation Breast Center and a former breast cancer patient. "They need to understand the basics so that they can reinforce when to be anxious and when to not be, how they can constructively, physically help, and when they need medical professionals to handle it."
