| Adequate support and improved relationships |
(3) [Has your perspective on marriage changed?] “Yes. I value my husband very much because I saw his interest in me. I see his support. When my mom was sick my dad left her. I had that imprinted in my mind, that one has to handle things alone. With my illness, I saw that my husband's support was very different. He never left me.” |
| (16) [Has your relationship with your partner changed?] “Yes it has changed. He supports me more in the house and no longer wants me to work so hard. ‘If you want, don’t go to work and stay at home with the children, I will go,’ he says.” |
| (3) [Has the support you received made you feel better?] “Yes. Especially my husband. He is very affectionate, very detailed, even the small things. He tells me, ‘Come, let’s go for a walk.’ Or, ‘I’ll buy you an ice cream,’ and then we talk for a long time. It distracts me a lot.” |
| (17) [Has the support you received made you feel better?] “When you get the diagnosis you think, ‘This will end our life as a couple.’ Fortunately that was not the case. My husband was here with me.” |
| Inadequate support and worsened relationships |
(9) [Do you have a partner?] “When I got cancer, I had my partner, but he left.” [Because of cancer?] Mmhmm.” |
| (4) “With my husband, I had many problems. Because I did not have my chest, or out of jealousy, I don’t know. I felt very bad and to date we have managed to fix a lot of things, but not everything.” |
| (4) “My husband is a burden to me. It’s more of a weight, but I’m afraid to leave him. I’m scared. He doesn’t help me, but since I lost many things, I lost my parents, my health and everything. The little bit that he does support me, in fact it is very little—for me it is a lot.” |
| (5) [Has your partner’s support made you feel better?] “At one point, I needed more company, more closeness and he did not provide that. He was present in another way, bringing me to the hospital, taking care of my medication. But emotionally, I felt he was very far from me.” |
| (4) [What are you most concerned about at the moment?] “The safety of my children. If my husband cannot give them that, neither economically or emotionally.. if I get sick, what would happen to them?” |
| Intimacy during treatment |
(3) [Has your relationship with your partner changed?] “Since the diagnosis, he has supported me in the sense that he does not sleep with me. He sleeps in another room. At first I said, ‘poor guy.’ But he would tell me, ‘No. Don’t worry. I'm ok. I don’t want to hurt you. I'm afraid that I’m going to move around and I’m going to hurt you.’ In that sense, he has helped me.” |
| (5) [Has your relationship with your partner changed?] “He changed a lot because when he was told his wife had cancer, and it was very advanced, that day he took his pillow, his blanket, and left my bed. Then, although he walked beside me for the cancer process and my consults, emotionally he did not. He was as a companion, a person concerned about me, but emotionally, he stepped aside.” |
| (18) [Differences from being young?] “My husband has helped me a lot in that respect. He has shown me that it does not matter. We enjoy life sexually with the same intensity, the same lifelong desires.” |
| Communication |
(10) “Previously I was not very communicative with my husband or my children. I would go from my work to the house, ‘Are you going to eat?’ ‘Yes’ and that was it. We never sat down to talk, ‘Oh look at this’ etc. Open communication was followed by change in my marriage and my relationship with my children because my husband came closer to me and I to him. He takes care of me and that is the reality.” |
| (7) [Do you have a hard time talking about cancer?] “Yes. He didn’t understand my pain very well or my feeling of being mutilated. He started to understand, little by little. He started reading a lot. He’s a man who reads a lot. He investigates.” |
| (5) [Do you have a hard time talking about cancer?] “Yes, it has been a lot of work, yes. Now I have to think about how I can bring up the topic. I could not talk about it before at all, no.” |
| (21) [Do you have a hard time talking about cancer?] “Right now, they always encourage me, ‘You had cancer, you do not have it anymore. You are not sick; you are as normal as anyone. We don’t want to talk about it anymore.’ There are times when I feel like talking about (cancer) but he does not.” |
| Dating |
(20) [Have you felt less or more feminine?] “At first we all feel less feminine because of the treatment, especially losing a breast. You think, ‘Ay! I don’t have a breast, and who is going to look at me?’ Then you think, ‘No. If a person is going to want me, it’s going to be with everything I have.’” |
| (4) “I think about how I could possibly have another partner if I don’t have my chest? I don’t know how I could possibly have another partner.” |
| (12) [Has your interest in a relationship changed?] “At this stage, I feel like to look for another partner . . . I feel like a partner isn’t going to provide for me because of the disease I have. Because it does come with a lot of expenses.” |
| (20) [Is it harder for you to establish a relationship?] “Yes, one is flirtatious, are you not? Haha. The boys always catch one’s eye. But because of this illness you aren’t flirtatious anymore, and then the more you think about it, what’s the point? Especially because I don’t know if I could tell them what I have. So I find it difficult to enter into a relationship. It’s not going to be a normal relationship anymore, is it?” |
