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What Should Gynecologic Cancer Patients Know About Their Sexuality? - Dr. Goldstein (VIDEO)

 
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What Should Gynecologic Cancer Patients Know About Their Sexuality?  - Dr. Goldstein (VIDEO)
What Should Gynecologic Cancer Patients Know About Their Sexuality? - Dr. ...
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Dr. Goldstein discusses what gynecologic cancer patients should know about their sexual health.

Dr. Goldstein:
Gynecologic cancer patients–women with cancer, either gynecologic or breast or leukemia or lymphoma--they need to know one thing: They have the right to sexual health. I am so frustrated when a woman comes in my office, “My oncologist says I am so happy that I am alive, that nothing else matters. I am here to see my grandchildren and just…and but I say I want the quality of life. I have intimacy with my husband.”

“Oh, you can’t think about that, Mrs. Jones. You know, just think that so happy you are alive and be grateful.” Women have the right to sexual health, even women with cancers. Women with breast cancers have the right to sexual health, women with ovarian cancers, uterine cancers, vaginal cancers; we see a whole bunch of radiation complications from the treatments.

It’s all individualized therapy. We work as a triangle: patient on top, sexual medicine doctor relating to the patient, oncologist relating to the patient, but communication between the sexual medicine and the oncologist. Sometimes the patient almost has to pick one over the other because someone is resistant to different treatments, but in typical, a triangular will help this work.

It is so important that women are empowered. We can do, poor women with cancer, they are put in this box, and we are not allowed to touch them, but that’s not true. There’s so many success stories. Women with breast cancer, vaginal cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, are getting care and we are communicating with the oncologist and doing it as safely and effectively as we can.

One thing for sure, there’s not a lot of large study data on this. So we have to do one at a time individually and just deal with their specific problems and efforts to help them that are acceptable to all parties.

If you are a cancer survivor, and it is important for you to have a sexual health life, and you are finding roadblocks in your healthcare delivery network, either at the gynecologic level or oncologic level–go find a sexual medicine doctor to be your quarterback through this process.

It’s complicated. You need a strong advocate to help the momentum, get it going, because there’s not a lot of interest in many of these healthcare providers to give you the sexual health, but you have the right to sexual health. Keep pursuing it. Find that sexual medicine doctor to sort of push.

We can get the lubrication going again. We can get the desire going again. We can get orgasms going again, and we could do it safely.

About Dr. Goldstein, M.D.:
Dr. Irwin Goldstein is Director of San Diego Sexual Medicine at Alvarado Hospital, the Secretary of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health, a former President of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America and a Clinical Professor of Surgery at University of California at San Diego.

Dr. Goldstein has been involved with sexual dysfunction research since the late 1970s. His specialties include penile microvascular bypass surgery, surgery for dyspareunia, physiologic investigation of sexual function in men and women, and diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunction in men and women.

Visit Dr. Goldstein at San Diego Sexual Medicine at Alvarado Hospital

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