A woman diagnosed with terminal cancer revealed that she split up with her husband to have sex with 200 men.
Molly Kochan was given a stage 4 breast cancer diagnosis in 2015, 10 years after noticing a lump on her breast. The former LA resident decided to leave her unhappy marriage to fulfil her desire to sleep with as many men as she could.
This story may sound familiar, as it was retold in FX series Dying For Sex in 2025 - named after her six-episode podcast. Michelle Williams starred as Molly, while Jenny Slate played her friend and co-host Nikki Boyer.
"For a long time with sex - and this is why I had a problem in my marriage - I was really, really, really good at figuring out what other people liked and then I could simulate that like an actor for them," Molly explained during a podcast episode released posthumously in 2020.
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"But I never really knew what I liked."
She revealed that the hormone medication ended up boosting her sex drive to the point that she 'wanted to hump everything and everyone'. As a result, Molly entered the world of kinky fetishes, casual sex and naughty sexting.
“Whenever my health scares escalated, so did my sexual adventures. It was a way to trump the distraction,” she added in her 2020 memoir Screw Cancer: Becoming Whole.
Molly said her husband wished her well, and his initial reaction was 'good for you'.
Above all, she said that regular sex was 'a great distraction from being sick'.
Her best friend Nikki, who recorded the podcast with her, said 'she was healing wounds on her death bed'.
"Her lifelong dream was to write a book and be a published author. She waited until the last few months of her life to do it. She was thinking the clearest she ever had in her life," she told the New York Post in 2020.
Although Molly didn't fall in love with any of the men she slept with, she learned to fall in love with herself.
"I wish I could cap off the whirlwind hospital story with an amazing tale about a guy who swept me off my feet and made me blush, but my visitor never showed up," she wrote.
"I realise I did get to fall in love. I am in love. With me."
Molly passed away from metastasised breast cancer in March 2019, at the age of 45.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact Macmillan’s Cancer Support Line on 0808 808 00 00, 8am–8pm seven days a week.
Topics: Dating trends, Sex and Relationships, Cancer, Podcast
Anish Vij