Cancer: Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus

When Ed Susralski, 67, was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer in 2007, he told himself, "I have cancer. I'm not cancer. I want to live my life." His wife, Leslie, he says, "did all the homework."

"I started to research what we were going to do," Leslie says. "I was more interested in, 'How are we going to give him quality of life while he could still have it?'"

Ed figured out how he could hang on to his job as a metal decorator. Semiretired, he now works one day a week to qualify for insurance. It was also important to him that he keep fishing, which he still does once or twice a week.

Leslie did research on nutrition and adopted a mostly vegetarian diet. Some of their food comes from the two organic gardens they planted. She also discovered meditation and guided imagery and started going to a cancer support center in the Susralskis' hometown of Orland Park, Illinois.

"Initially I didn't go [to the support center] because I was kind of skeptical about the mind/body thing," Ed says, adding that now he goes to Reiki classes and volunteers there, although not quite as much as his wife.

[Read: Calling on Cancer's A-Team.]

The Gender Divide in Disease

The Susralskis' reactions to Ed's diagnosis are fairly representative of an age-old gender divide that was classically coined in John Gray's 1992 book "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus." The book captures men's and women's different emotional lives and communication styles. Women tend to talk to others about problems, whereas men crawl into a cave and try to solve them solo.

The stereotypes persist in the disease world as well. The Cancer Treatment Centers of America conducted a recent survey called "The Cancer Survey: A National Study of Patients and Caregivers," in which gendered reactions to a cancer diagnosis emerged. More than half of the women surveyed were more motivated by family goals to get better, whereas men were motivated by resuming daily activities. Women were also more likely to use the Internet to research their disease, and they rated nutritional and psychological counseling as more important than men did.

For Maurie Markman, a physician and CTCA president of medicine and science, the most surprising finding was that women do more research on the Internet, compared with their tech-savvy male counterparts. However, Markman added that even though we perceive men to have more tech skills (whether this is true or not), the very notion of seeking out information is still more in line with women's nature.

"Women are less focused on 'I know the answer,'" and more likely to "gather around," Markman says. "Women see the Internet as an extension of their worldview."

If the Internet is the metaphorical hearth, then food, too, still falls within a women's domain. So naturally, women tend to be more interested in nutrition. "They are the ones who prepare and think about food. That's what their life has been outside the cancer experience," Markman says.

[Read: Can You Afford Your Cancer Care?]

Cancer Amplifies Personality Differences

Eileen Coan, a medical librarian at the Gathering Place East, a nonprofit community cancer center in Beachwood, Ohio, says not only do gender or personality differences emerge during the cancer experience, they also tend to intensify.

"Who you are after cancer is who you were before cancer times 10. If you were a person who struggled with sadness, you are very sad," Coan says.

Regardless of gender, most people experience some universal emotions upon being diagnosed with cancer: anger, sadness, fear. "I've been working with cancer patients for 18 years, and I've noticed some differences," Coan adds. "Men get the anger part, but are not as comfortable with the sadness."

"Women are more used to being sad," she continues, adding that women may also think, "How can I be angry? That's what my body did."

Similarly, in a group setting, women are more likely to nod their heads, while men are skeptical, Coan says. It follows that men are more willing to seek second opinions, and women may hold back for fear of offending a doctor, Coan adds.

While these types of gender differences don't necessarily affect longevity -- although men are more likely to pursue a last-ditch effort to save themselves or their loved ones, whether or not it pans out -- these differences can affect quality of life issues, Coan says. So if you're a lone ranger, for example (as more men than women tend to be), "cancer is not the time to go off on your own. They may not get the GPS, but at least ask the people around them."

Women tend to be more attracted by the sisterhood of support groups, even long after their illness, whereas men are more likely to go back to their lives, Coan says. "They don't want to live in a cancer world forever."

[Read: How to Be a Good Patient Wingman.]

Defying Stereotypes

But not everyone's personality, of course, fits into their gender stereotype. When Pam Cromwell, 37, was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer just six months before her 30th birthday, the business analyst in New York leaned on her logical instincts. "That trumped my emotional side," she says. "I think that was a good thing. It kept me sane."

Especially since the doctor who diagnosed Cromwell was crying as he told her, giving her six months to live. Cromwell consulted her brother, a nurse and her best friend, who then worked for the American Cancer Society. "They said, 'We need to go elsewhere because he gave up on you,'" Cromwell says. "That kind of began my journey."

More in sync with the stereotypical male personality, Cromwell calls herself "a fixer." She did research on the Internet about therapies, but not for emotional support, and she didn't attend support groups. "Support groups tend to make me more depressed," she says, because she can't necessarily "do" anything immediately to fix people's sorrows.

Instead, Cromwell stratified her friends and family members according to what type of support each could give and sought them out accordingly.

Always career focused, Cromwell says cancer made her feminine traits, or preoccupations, emerge. "You don't realize how much vanity you have until things are taken away from you," she says. "As an African-American woman, our hair is our glory," she adds -- and the prospect of losing it upset her more than the treatments. "With cancer, the MAC counter and I became best friends," she continues, adding that part of her drive to recreate lost eyebrows and lashes was to keep up a corporate image, since she's never stopped working -- even while undergoing treatment.

"Part of the therapy for me was feeling like cancer hasn't changed me to the extreme," she says.

And Cromwell, unlike many women her age, hasn't been preoccupied with curing herself for her children, since she doesn't have any yet.

"I've pretty much gone through this as a single woman without kids," she says, adding that she now has a boyfriend. But unlike her peers who may want to gut through cancer primarily to see their children grow up, or are grateful they can cross having children off their bucket list, "You still haven't hit those goals yet," Cromwell says. "There's an urgency inside of you. I still want to be able to do these things."

And whatever the case -- whether you are a man or woman, or you carry your gender's stereotypical personality, experts say if there's ever a time that men and women need each other, it's during diseases like cancer.

Differences aside, men and women can feed off each others' strengths. "We've tag-teamed through this whole thing so far," Ed Susralski says.

[Read: A Patient's Guide to Second Opinions.]

Kristine Crane is a Patient Advice reporter at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at kcrane@usnews.com.