Helping Couples Cope with Breast Cancer

Helping Couples Cope with Breast Cancer
from the Patriot Ledger

Social work professor Karen Kayser hoped her research would help couples cope with breast cancer. What she didn’t expect was how useful it would be when she was diagnosed with breast cancer 21/2 years ago.

“I knew how important it was to have a positive outlook and a supportive partner.”

Breast cancer, she’d learned, is a “we-disease,” and women and men each coped better when each received support.

“I knew it would be important to talk about my husband’s feelings as well as my own,” she said. “I made a concerted effort to be aware of what he was going through, and he was able to support me.”

In essence, Kayser put into practice what she learned from the clinical trial of her Partners in Coping program, developed to help couples communicate and support each other.

In the three-year trial, 26 couples at Mass General Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston met nine times with an oncology social worker to focus on specific topics, such as balancing the illness with household and family responsibilities, emotional responses to vulnerability, and feelings about sexuality. After six and 18 months, they answered a follow-up questionnaire.

The control group of 26 other couples were referred to a social worker, the more standard approach. The couples ranged in age from late 20s to late 60s, and all the women had cancer that had not spread and had been diagnosed within the past three months.

“The couples in the program tended to do much better coping than the control group,” Kayser said. “They were talking about their stress, empathizing with each other and showing affection. Over and over, people would say, ‘These are things I think but never talk about.’ Coming into a neutral place and having someone facilitate the discussion opened up what was going on.”

The program was especially helpful for younger couples, who in general found the diagnosis more distressing because of their age and the demands of working and raising children, she said.

“It’s all about people coping with stress and trauma,” Kayser said. “How can you take something devastating and transform it into something good in the long run?”

Grand Round is up at Mexico Medical Student

This Grand Rounds (the week's collection of posts from the health blogosphere) at Mexico Medical Student even includes music.

Gratitude Can Transform You

From a USA Today article:

Giving Thanks Can Make You Healthier, Happier

Lyubomirsky and Emmons are researchers from the University of California-Davis: who have studied the power of gratitude and learned, for example, that:

•People with high blood pressure not only lower their blood pressure, but feel less hostile and are more likely quit smoking and lose weight when they practice gratitude. In one study, patients just called a research hotline once a week to report on the things that made them grateful.

•People who care for relatives with Alzheimer's disease feel less stress and depression when they keep daily gratitude journals, listing the positive things in their lives.

•Those who maintain a thankful attitude through life appear to have lower risks of several disorders, including depression, phobias, bulimia and alcoholism.

•Most people can lift their mood simply by writing a letter of thanks to someone. Hand-deliver the letter, and the boost in happiness can last weeks or months.

Practicing gratitude in these systematic ways changes people by changing brains that "are wired for negativity, for noticing gaps and omissions," Emmons says. "When you express a feeling, you amplify it. When you express anger, you get angrier; when you express gratitude, you become more grateful."

And grateful people, he says, don't focus so much on pain and problems. They also are quicker to realize they have friends, families and communities to assist them in times of need. They see how they can help others in distress as well, he says.

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May we all find a kindred hand to hold and someone to be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

Kreativ Blogger Award

I am touched that two terrific blogs passed on the Kreativ Blogger Award to me -- Lemon Aide and How to Cope with Pain.

The recipient names six things she is happy about and passes the award on to six other blogs.

Here are my 6 happy things:

1 - The usual suspects -- my sweetie, friends, family, the sky, chocolate, many good days


2 - Pandora - radio from the music genome project


3 - Looking forward to reading Neal Stephenson's latest book, Anathem


4 -


5 - Our Japanese toilet


6 - Memories of my dog, Mina


There are so many great blogs out there, but the blogs I have the pleasure of passing this award on to are:

The Wife of a Schizophrenic
Multiple Synchronicities
But You Don't Look Sick
About A Nurse
Everyone Need Therapy
Discover and Recover

Grand Rounds is Up at Dr. Deb

Grand Rounds is a collection of weekly posts from the health blogosphere. they always make good reading. This week it's at Dr. Deb.

Freezing and Unfreezing

There are these two nude statues, man and woman, standing across from each other in a secluded park. A few hundred years after they've been put in place, an angel flutters down to them.

A wave of his hand, and suddenly the statues have been given flesh, and they step down from their pedestals.

The angel says, "I have been sent to grant the request you both have made after hundreds of years of standing across from each other, unable to move. But be quick--you only have fifteen minutes until you must become statues again."

The man looks at the woman, and they both flush, and giggle, and run off into some underbrush. An intense rustling comes from the bushes, and seven minutes later, they both come back to the angel, obviously satisfied.

The angel smiles at the couple. "That was only seven minutes--why not go back and do it again?"

The former statues look at each other for a minute, and then the woman says, "Why not? But let's reverse it. This time you hold down the pigeon, and I'll shit on its head...."

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Not to wax too philosophical about a silly story - but I think it's often in the nature of the couple relationship that we get frozen into positions. We can be drawn to each other because we see in the other qualities that complete something for us. Kindness where we might have experienced harshness in the past. Adoration reflected back at us from our partner's eyes instead of the contempt we came to expect from someone who was once important to us. Help instead of invisibility. Sorrow for our pain, instead of self righteousness.

Once we receive these surprising gifts, it is easy to lock the partner into this role, defined by these attributes, a role we so much want him or her to ceaselessly portray. And to become intolerant of any deviations from the script.

Richard needs me to listen to him, to give him the complete hearing his family was unable to provide. I need him to see me, to reflect back to me my beauty and not shame me for my warts. When I can't listen to him, or he can't recognize me, we can get frozen. We can get stuck in a struggle to coerce the response we so desire from the other, and ironically, this struggle drives away what we most want -- connection.

Illness, of course, makes this dance more intricate. Pain, exhaustion, fear on the part of the ill partner can make the needs feel more urgent while the ability to articulate them becomes more remote. Helplessness, empathy, anger, and exhaustion on the part of the well partner can have the same effect. What is the result? Freezing. Getting locked in place in repetitive, fruitless attempts to extract comfort from someone as wounded and stuck as you.

How do you unfreeze? Go shit on a pigeon.

Not literally. But introduce something unexpected into the mix. Something startling. Especially something funny. Something that disrupts the pattern and starts the unfreezing. Anything from Monty Python or the Daily Show, even the Weather Channel. Watch a small dog try to carry a very large stick. Reach across the aisle and grab hold of your partner's hand.

Go shit on a pigeon.

True Love Crosses All Lines: Tarra and Bella

The story begins:

"In the secret back hills of rural Tennessee an unusual relationship had developed......"

You will delight in reading this remarkable story about Tarra and Bella.

I think we learn the most about true love and caring from the unexpected places.