Coping with prostate cancer:
the partner's point of view

Prostate cancer may not kill every man it touches, but it transforms the life of the afflicted man as well as of those who love him. For me, learning to recognize and live with the side effects of my husband’s treatment was very difficult. I sometimes felt I was living with a stranger.

Why is this happening?

We knew nothing about prostate cancer when Ludwick got the diagnosis. We sat together in that office, numb and feeling as good as dead already. If only the doctor had said something like "This is going to be one wild ride for both of you," I might have been better prepared for what followed. The problem is that prostate cancer and its treatments are peculiarly selective in how they affect individuals. While our experience didn’t follow the typical "treat-it-and-beat-it" routine that many celebrate, we’re aware that some others are worse off than ourselves.

Ludwick and I were naively confident about our genetic potential for a long life together. His parents were already well into their venerable 90s, and my grandmother was 100 when she died. After the death of several friends from other cancers, his parents had assured us there was no cancer in their family history. Ludwick’s diagnosis blew our genetic predisposition theory out into space.

My mother-in-law had a simple explanation for why her son got prostate cancer. She looked me squarely in the eyes and said "It was your cooking." As both she and her husband lived to see 98 years of age, maybe she knew something we didn’t! But at that moment, years before she died, I didn’t expect to cry at her funeral. At that moment, I felt that access to a very important support system was slammed shut in my face.

We worried about the significance this cancer had for our children’s health. Are sons and daughters more susceptible to cancer? Why did he get it? Could it really have had something to do with how we ate?

Shared decisions

Our goal was simple — get rid of the cancer. We had several weeks to research the various treatment strategies. To learn how to go about fighting this disease, Ludwick disappeared on a solitary sabbatical with his computer.

Those days, nearly all our conversations revolved around prostate cancer, and they weren’t always calm. We had always consulted each another about serious decisions. Ludwick shared his thoughts about the different options, but I found it impossible to support any one treatment without getting hung up on its side effects. It seemed to me then that whatever treatment he chose, he had to be the one convinced that it was the right one, because he was the one who would have to live with the consequences. At the time, I had no inkling how those side effects would also affect me!

In school, nuns taught me that true love is noble and self-sacrificing. The nuns shared an exceptional marriage; their spouse loved them infinitely, provided well for them, never generated any laundry or criticized their cooking, and was unlikely to have prostate cancer. I struggled with the reality that when a loved one develops a deadly disease, you effectively give up your own life to help them cope, even when you would passionately prefer to be doing something else. This is sometimes very hard to do — I’m no nun, and my husband isn’t perfect, either. Marriage can be a pretty bewildering place, and going through this together has shown us that compromise and patience are part and parcel of love.

Dealing with depression

Ludwick chose to undergo hormonal therapy as part of his treatment. We’d been warned about possible side effects, but I wasn’t prepared for the changes in his personality. This type of treatment, like others, affects everyone differently. Aging itself brings on some unwelcome transformations — that wisdom and medical science can moderate — but my husband’s prostate cancer treatment further aggravated these changes.

Ludwick had never before been prone to depression, so I was caught off-guard. My initial reaction when it started was to wonder: “Is he losing it? Is it aging? Burnout? Is this the end of our marriage?” Not knowing what was happening, my imagination soared. No one had warned us that these drugs, designed to weaken and push prostate cancer away, can also threaten to drive the patient and his loved ones apart.

When he stopped the hormone therapy, the depression stopped, too, and the man I love returned. But this may also result in the cancer coming back. It is a wild ride.

Prostate cancer made us question our old habits, for example our diet. We’ve eaten more fish since the diagnosis than I had during my entire preceding life. (They say you are what you eat, but I still can’t swim!) We discovered food combinations that seemed to help dissipate the depression while he was on the hormone therapy, but this didn’t solve all our problems.

To look at Ludwick, you’d never know he was ill — he looks as handsome and sexy as before! It took me a long time to appreciate how insidiously the treatment was affecting him, despite his healthy physical appearance. Before the cancer, I’d try to help when I saw he was distressed, listless, frustrated or just not himself. On occasion, we frankly disagreed and argued. But during the cancer treatment, I found it hard to see past the aggravation and recognize which moods — like the depression — were now out of his control. I read them as normal everyday interactions gone awry. Often, I heeded the urge to run for cover or tune out entirely, and this compounded my husband’s misery many times.

Finding support

My Eureka! moment exploded when we went to our first Montreal West Island Prostate Cancer Support Group meeting. It was like visiting old family friends. Members greeted us and welcomed us into comfortable surroundings. When I heard other healthy-looking cancer fighters talk about their difficulties, I began to understand Ludwick and his new problems through a different perspective. Until then, I thought he’d been mostly fishing for excuses to avoid situations and commitments.

Prostate cancer is complicated and Ludwick and I don’t always agree on what the war against it is about

Still regular members of the group years later, we’ve both learned many valuable lessons. While the cancer continues to dominate our household routine, we’re surviving and getting better at it every day. We continue to go to meetings to hear interesting guest speakers, get answers to nagging questions and share experiences with other men and women living with this disease.

A continuing search

We use simple strategies to cope with this disease, one step at a time. Many little adjustments are ingrained in our lifestyle, for example:

• Whenever possible, we avoid setting deadlines because we’ve discovered that the present becomes more significant when we’re not busy planning future schedules.
• For entertainment, we choose comedies and silliness over serious drama, because a good laugh is so invigorating.

Ludwick’s cancer was discovered before it had a chance to spread to his bones and he’s now in his sixth year of miracle drugs. Prostate cancer is complicated and Ludwick and I don’t always agree on what the war against it is about. I sometimes wish we could simply put it out of our minds and get on with living. But he continues to search for the nugget of information that will further improve his chances for victory. One thing is certain: as long as this cancer persists, we’ll keep on learning to live through it together.

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MORE: Coping with prostate cancer: JOIN THE FIGHT! By Ludwick Papaurelis