How former party girl Courtney Bugler dealt with breast cancer invading her life -- and sex life.
She was the life of the party. Courtney Bugler, in her skinny jeans, halter top and self-proclaimed perfect 34B cups, loved all the attention. She drank hard, stripped in front of friends and, when it came to it, approached guys for sex. That's actually how she met her husband.
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The two were married for a year and a half when she got the news. "I'm sorry ? you have cancer ? the youngest person that I've ever seen?" Courtney fell to the floor, as her husband, mother and golden retriever rushed into the laundry room where she laid in tears, her phone at her side. She had no idea how much her life was about to change.
She was 29.
"The dirty little secret about breast cancer is that you are diagnosed feeling okay, and finish your treatment feeling like s**t," Courtney says.?
Though rare, Courtney is not alone. Nearly 70,000 people under the age of 39 have cancer in the U.S., and roughly 15 percent of those suffer from breast cancer cases similar to Courtney's. For many of these women, sex is never again the same, says Mary Jo Rapini, a YourTango expert and psychotherapist specializing in intimacy and relationships. It's an invasion of the most feminine parts of the body, and many patients fall into depression. Younger patients, she says, can become particularly angry about it. On top of it all, breast cancer treatments lower libido, and change the way a woman looks and feels, she says.
Courtney, who has always desperately wanted children, now had to reckon with a chemotherapy-induced menopause at age 30, which required her ovaries be removed. And then there was her sex life.
"I don't have sex at all anymore," Courtney, now 33, says. "I'm exhausted. I'm fat. I want to go to sleep at 6:30. I've lost all confidence."
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Courtney's husband, 30, wants to show his wife he cares by having sex. But Courtney feels pressured by him. Having gained 40 pounds, jumping from a size 6 to 14, Courtney no longer walks around naked in front of anyone anymore, and that includes her husband. Her breasts are no longer the beautiful 34B cups she remembers. Plus, early menopause gives her hot flashes and makes her exhausted.
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Source: http://www.yourtango.com/2012163547/i-got-breast-cancer-29-what-it-did-my-marriage-sex-life
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