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Meet the Doctor Who Wants People to Have Good Sex After Cancer
60% of cancer survivors experience sexual dysfunction. Kristin Rojas breaks down taboos with a lot of determination and some lube.
The sun has set on Please, an “educated pleasure shop” in Brooklyn. Against a rainbow of vibrators and dozens of intriguing how-to and history books, Dr. Kristin Rojas is surveying the latest wares. There’s the Ohnut, a set of stretchy seafoam green rings designed to limit the depth of a penetrating partner, and a smartphone-connected Kegel device for coping with incontinence.
The 32-year-old breast cancer surgeon comes here often. She lives in the neighborhood — the brownstone-lined streets of Park Slope — and works nearby at Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn’s largest hospital. In the course of a week, Rojas counsels scores of cancer patients on radiation and chemotherapy and excises a dozen lumps and bumps. But her real passion lies in the Maimonides Urogenital, Sexual Health, and Intimacy Center, or MUSIC.
The center, which Rojas founded in 2018, is designed to help some of the estimated 10 million Americans experiencing some form of sexual dysfunction after treatment for ovarian, prostate, bladder, endometrial, uterine, vaginal, vulvar, breast, rectal, or colon cancer. Every other Friday, Rojas meets with patients whose symptoms range from vaginal dryness to low libido, super-menopause to pelvic floor pain. Together they talk through lubricants, hormones, vaginal dilators, physical therapy, and sex toys.
“I’m trying to make all of these topics not taboo. It’s a huge quality of life issue. We should change the dialogue from not ‘Will you live?’ but ‘How will you live?’”
“I call it vibrator therapy,” Rojas says, a smile tugging at her lips.
Oncologists know that radiation, chemotherapy, and other cancer treatments can result in sexual side effects. But they don’t always know how to talk about it — or how to help. Their job is to eliminate a patient’s cancer, not confabulate about sexual pleasure (or the lack of it). But awkward silence can keep patients from…
