OUR MARITAL HEALTH/SEX AND PROBLEMS OF DAILY LIVING: MOVING THROUGH LIFE AND KEEPING SEXUALITY MOVING – AGING ADULTHOOD: MAKING VS. MONITORING

Of course, we are all aging all of the time. This phase of development, the sexuality of our later years, involves making an emotional and cognitive choice between sitting back and allowing sexuality to diminish or continuing to make the effort, the time, the risk to reach out for sexual fulfillment in our last decades. There is nothing in the physical development of the human that precludes sexual activity until death. Who knows what goes on after that?

As we mature, we are able to accept what life is giving and balance that with what we do not want to take. You may have more time in your later years to monitor those who are still trying to save

Sex and Problems of Dally Living: Why Nobody Has a Sex Life 267 or destroy our worid. Watching, reporting, writing, and serving as a watchperson for social values can be a healthy phase of life no less important than the more physically active tasks of younger years. We don’t have to sit back, but sit up and take notice. If you don’t do it, who will? Younger people are too busy doing things to pay much attention to what they are doing and its long-term impact. They don’t have the perspective of the older adult. The same holds true sexually. A slower, less physically vigorous sexuality is not the only sex available during our later years. It is an option all of us should consider at any time in our life.

After you have discussed these phases with your partner, sit back—better yet, lie back—and review each phase, silendy. Where are you now anyway?

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AFTER THE OPERATION – GENERAL INFORMATION

Just as you should insist on getting the results of any tests you have, so you should make sure that your doctor tells you exactly what was found at the operation, and what procedure was done. Ask what the pathologist found when the removed tissues were examined under the microscope. Ask what all these facts mean for you. Here is a chance which you should not miss to obtain definite and useful information about your own particular case. Now that all the details are known your doctor should be able to give you more accurate information about what to expect in the future and what further treatment, if any, should be considered. You can only make the best plans and decisions for yourself if you get this information.

Say, for example, you have had a breast removed. You have been told it was the common type of breast cancer—an adenocarcinoma. If it was confined completely to the breast, the chance of cure is about two in three. If it has spread to the lymph nodes in the armpit, the chance of cure is about one in three, even less if many of the nodes were affected. The chance is possibly improved by having some chemotherapy as well as the surgery. If it had grown into the nearby skin or muscle, or spread to the nodes in the neck, there is only a tiny chance of complete and permanent cure, whatever treatment is used. Before your operation you would not have been sure which of these facts applied to your particular case. After your operation you can be sure.

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