ask: Suggestion on CML Cancer

Hi Anonymous

Thanks for your post and welcome! Unless otherwise stated, your questions are answered by health care writers (most with a background in health) and not doctors.

Blood cancer is not contagious so this man cannot get it via sex with his wife.

If his wife is looking for other "matches" for her husband, I assume you mean she thinks she will die and is looking for another woman to marry him? If so, that's probably based on her fears and her love for him; not wanting him to be alone. We cannot tell you if she may die from her kind of cancer because only her own doctors can do that. She is likely doing this due an emotional reaction to her cancer diagnosis. She needs to focus on her own health, not finding a wife for her husband but I do understand where she is coming from. Her husband should also tell his wife that he is fine and his concern is for her and her alone.

With regard to testing his daughter, some cancers have some basis in hereditary but many do not. If the daughter is perfectly healthy, there may be no need to test for this blood cancer. However, again, I understand their fears and if a test will not harm her and SHE is in agreement with getting tested, then there should be no reason not to. However, her parents need to take care not to frighten her or make her paranoid about getting her mother's type of cancer. She just needs to be educated and aware.

Your friend needs to sit down with his wife and her doctors to have all these answers explained in detail to them. And read more on our CML page here: http://www.empowher.com/condition/chronic-myelocytic-leukemia

Are there support groups for you and your wife where you live? Your doctors can help you with this too!

I wish this woman the very best in her recovery.

Take care and thanks for writing,
~Susan