You may be able to survive cancer, but can your relationship?

Kevin Murphy has all the look of the slick Brooklyn-born attorney he has become. But scratch the surface of this sharp image and, quite quickly, the raw emotion of his personal trials and tribulations comes flowing out.

Murphy's voice breaks with emotion as he sketches in details of how his wife was diagnosed with neck cancer when pregnant with their first child (she had been misdiagnosed months before she became pregnant) and their gruelling journey through the pregnancy, birth of their daughter, his wife's subsequent treatment for Hodgkin's disease and the "miracle" birth of their second daughter.

Emotional side of cancer
"There are lots of stories of incredible fundraisers for cancer and the marvellous survival rates but the flipside of this disease is the emotional side and my wife and I were not able to cope with the toxic brew of emotions that cancer brought," says Murphy.

His book, Surviving Cancer after Surviving Cancer (Headline Books), comes with a forward by the eminent American cancer surgeon and best-selling author, Bernie Siegel.

“My wife was more worried about family – her baby daughter and whether her husband would leave her – than her illness. I was unable to cope with her illness and was filled with anger and despair,” says Murphy.

In the book, Murphy details his own desperation with the financial strains of his wife's cancer treatment in Stanford University Hospital (2,300 miles from their home in Kentucky) but most of all, it's the couple's complete freezing out of each other as they both go through the ordeal that strikes the reader most.

Loss of communication
"Cancer shuts down communication. We didn't want to burden each other. But I urge people to talk to each other. When communication stops, anger and despair take root," says Murphy.

In the book, he writes, “Once the actual disease had been beaten, our relationship began sliding into a slow steady decline . . . For years, we lived our lives in quiet despair, tending to the children and acting to the outside world as if nothing was wrong.”

Divorce
Murphy and his wife (who, incredibly he doesn't name in his book) divorced 11 years after their first daughter was born. Their daughters, Elizabeth and Kathleen, are now in their 20s.

“I was strong for the longest time but I suffered from terrible stomach problems. My life was chaotic and I had so much work that my life spun out of control.

“It was only after the divorce that I went for counselling and realised so much.”

Fifteen years on, Kevin Murphy is dedicating more and more time to giving talks “to stop the tide of divorce in cancer couples”.

He is also planning to develop a workshop for men to make them realise that seeking help in a crisis is “the strong – not the weak thing to do”.

His research has found the divorce rate is six times higher if the woman in a couple has cancer. “Are we [men] such terrible care-givers? We go to war, put out fires but when [personal] things get out of control, we don’t know what to do.”

Emphasising his own experience of the grittier side of life, he adds, “I’ve been a truck driver and a fire fighter in New York. I come from a family where I was told people don’t want to hear about your complaints. So, I had the attitude that I was all on my own. Stubbornness and pride wouldn’t let me look for [financial] help. I look back now and I see lots of people who would have helped me.”

Murphy also reveals how his financial problems drove him to becoming a workaholic once his wife's cancer treatment was finished and everyone was back living together in Kentucky.

“I decided I was never going to be broke again and I went down roads that kept me away from my wife and children,” says Murphy, who nonetheless became the principle carer of his two children one year after the couple divorced.

Murphy’s mission is to spread the message of the three Fs – faith, family and friends – as the keys to surviving the emotional maelstrom of cancer.

“You’ll need faith in the doctors and nurses, faith in your significant other who has cancer and faith in God above,” he says. On family, he says, “let them in to help and express their love”. And on friends, he says, “lean on them, go bowling, play cards or talk to the people in your church.”