Cancer victims suffer double whammy as husbands abandon them for undergoing breast removal

BREAST cancer victims have cried out that they are being made to suffer twice for their afflictions as many of their husbands shun them calling them half women if they end up having to have a mammary gland removed as part of their treatment.

One of the most common forms of the ailment, breast cancer involves the growth of lumps on the mammary glands that sometimes leads to removals to stop the spread. However, some women have revealed that after going through their ordeal, they then have to deal with their husbands no longer finding them appealing.

Algerian mother-of-three Linda revealed that following her operation, she was spurned by her husband for being mutilated and a half-woman. Linda, 50, was married for 18 years but revealed that the cancer was nothing compared with being rejected by her husband after returning from hospital.

She is one of hundreds of Algerian women to have been abandoned by their husbands or fiancés after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Thousands of women are found to suffer from the disease every year in Algeria, leaving many with no option but to surgically remove a part of their body deeply associated with their femininity.

Another victim, Hayat,30 said her fiancé dumped her after she told him she had an emergency operation to remove a breast. She said:  “He told me I want a whole woman, not three-quarters of one."

Samia Gasmi, the head of a cancer charity Nur Doha, which means Light of Day in Arabic, said many women are left alone to face drastic treatment . She added that sometimes this even leaves some of them without a roof over their heads.

Ms Gasmi said: “Others end up in shelters because they have nowhere else to go once their husbands abandon them. These women view their illness as shameful."

In a country where breast cancer is viewed as a private matter, patients are often reluctant to speak up, even sometimes hiding it from their own family. One woman refused to tell her own sister, said, while another started wearing the Islamic scarf before chemotherapy so her husband’s family would have no idea when her hair started falling out.

Sociologist Yamina Rahou says this feeling of shame comes from the pain of having a body part that symbolises femininity amputated. Patients who have had a breast removed feel they no longer fulfil the role society demands of a woman, according to the Social and Cultural Anthropology Research Centre in Oran.

Theologian Kamel Chekkat, of the Algerian Clerics Association, insisted men rejecting their wives after they have a breast removed is un-Islamic. He added that Islam urges spouses to support each other and an honourable man should look after his wife.