The experience and construction of changes in women's sexuality after breast cancer : a material-discursive-intrapsychic analysis

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women globally (World Health Organization, 2009). It is now recognized that changes to sexual well-being can be the most problematic aspect of life post-breast cancer, with the impact lasting for many years after successful treatment (Andersen, 2009; Bertero & Wilmoth, 2007), often associated with serious physical and emotional side effects (Langellier & Sullivan, 1998). Indeed, research has shown that when compared with healthy same-aged women, women with breast cancer experience lower levels of sexual. satisfaction and have more difficulty maintaining their sexual lives (Speer et al., 2005). Until recently, research examining the impact of breast cancer on sexuality was primarily conducted from a positivist-realist paradigm (Wilmoth, 2001), privileging the physical and material aspects of women's experience, and focusing on levels of sexual "dysfunction" post-breast cancer, where functional sexuality is conceptualized as penile/vaginal intercourse (Fobair et al., 2006).