Feelin' Sick, Ladies? Better Hog-Tie Your Man

I've read a lot of depressing news about the state of marriage recently, but none more dismal than a new study just released by the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

Cancer docs noticed that many of their patients were separating or divorcing during treatment. These patients weren't doing well. They used more antidepressants, participated less in clinical trials, had more frequent hospitalizations, were less likely to complete radiation therapy and more likely not to die at home.

They also shared one more characteristic: They were almost always women. Six times more likely to be women, according to the just-released study.

And it gets worse: The study found that the older the woman, the more likely she would be abandoned by her partner.

There were some bright spots. The longer a couple had been married, the less likely the woman was to be deserted when she fell ill. Hooray for that.

And husbands weren't all grabbing a fast train out of town the minute a wife seemed unlikely to get dinner to the table on time. In fact, the overall divorce or separation rate among cancer patients, 11.6 percent, is similar to the population as a whole.

But then the findings get grim again. Real grim if you're a woman. That average divorce rate doesn't go any higher solely because of women. Many women see a husband's illness as a reason that they cannot leave their marriage. Even if they were planning to. Even if they desperately want to. They just can't do it.

A good percentage of husbands don't see it that way at all. They're outta there. Whimpering, whining, skulking, relieved, happy to be free -- doesn't matter how they feel. What they do is the story. These are my interpretations of the data, of course. All the researchers noted was that only 2.9 percent of the wives left their marriages when husbands were the patients, while 20.8 percent of husbands (that's one out of five, girls) left sick wives.

Why did the men leave, according to the researchers? They just couldn't commit. Being so suddenly thrust into the role of caregiver overwhelmed them.

Three medical centers participated in the study. They looked at men and women with two types of cancer: those with a malignant primary brain tumor (214 patients) and those with a solid tumor with no central nervous system involvement (193 patients). They also included 108 patients with multiple sclerosis. Almost half of the patients were women.

"We believe that our findings apply generally to patients with life-altering medical illness," the authors wrote. "We recommend that medical providers be especially sensitive to early suggestions of marital discord in couples affected by the occurrence of a serious medical illness, especially when the woman is the affected spouse and it occurs early in the marriage. Early identification and psychosocial intervention might reduce the frequency of divorce and separation, and in turn improve quality of life and quality of care."

Let's end on that happy thought.