Are there times during cancer treatment when I shouldn’t have sex?

Q: Are there times during cancer treatment when I shouldn’t have sex? 

A: Yes. In the days and weeks after surgery, your health care professional may recommend that you abstain from sex to prevent irritating the incision or pulling out stitches. Also, if you’re undergoing treatment that makes you susceptible to infection, your doctor may want you to avoid contact with anyone, especially intimate contact.

When you’re able to have sex, it’s very important that you practice safe sex, using protection against physical contact with all sexual partners. That’s because people who’ve been diagnosed with cancer, or are in treatment, are more likely to have weakened immune systems. This increases your vulnerability to infections of all types.

While you’re having chemotherapy, use barrier contraceptives, such as condoms. Chemotherapy drugs may be excreted in body fluids and unintentionally enter your partner’s body. You also want to prevent pregnancy at this time because treatment exposes the fetus to dangers from chemotherapy drugs in early pregnancy.
--Bernice Crook, RN, OCN

Learn how chemotherapy can affect your sex life.