I should say that I have always struggled with my weight but really for many years I just did not care. Which is detrimental in its own way, isn’t it? About five years ago I made my first ever effort to start correcting some of my ingrained bad behaviors around food and alcohol, with varying degrees of success. I’m a 5’3” woman and my top weight was measured at 298lbs (during a doctor’s visit) but I’m sure I was up in the 300s at some point. I wrestled my way down into the 250s and it was a fight to get there.
Then I started to feel pain, pain like I’d never experienced in my entire life, the kind of pain that locks you down into yourself like a prisoner. My appetite was obliterated and I lost 30lbs in a month. Yup, you guessed it – Stage IV Cancer!
During treatment I did pretty well (they want you to maintain weight) - got down to 212lbs but really stayed somewhere near 225lbs throughout surgeries and chemo. I made it out the other side of active treatment in January 2020. I’d like to tell you I was elated that I survived but in truth I was a washed-out exhausted mess.
I was just starting to hobble my weak ass out into the sun again when covid hit. Well, shitballs. I’m locked down at home and cancel all my “you somehow survived” trips that I’d planned for the year. I’ll tell you what I did get back during lockdown – my appetite and my tastebuds. I’d lost both and never thought to see them again but they were back baby!
I gained the Covid 50 and didn’t really notice until my first day going back in the office at work and I couldn’t wear ANYTHING (pants? No, button-ups? No way, work shoes? ouch). Well dammit, I was back at 275. I was also now experiencing severe arthritic joint pain over my entire body as a side effect of the medicine I take to keep my cancer in check. I know that my weight is exacerbating this condition too.
This is where the new struggle begins because the absolute second I lose any weight the entirety of my being hits panic mode and thinks we are dying again. That took me a while to figure out but once I did it was like a giant cartoon lightbulb popped on over my head. I definitely should have gone to counseling at this point but I have deep doctor fatigue and am not at all interested in having to be vulnerable with yet another medical professional.
So I start having serious talks with myself about what I am choosing to do. Eating right and taking long walks (which are now jogs) is a choice I am making. I am picking this and working towards this and it is NOT cancer again. This mostly works but the checkups and CTs every three months also help. It apparently takes a village to reassure my subconscious.
This has been a real battle because it has not eased. I must continually have this stream of consciousness narrative with myself especially if I feel a twinge of any sort of non-arthritic pain anywhere in my body. Maybe this is how I am supposed to have always been versus ignoring myself for years on end? I think I’d eventually like to compromise and settle somewhere more towards the middle.
My first goal was to get back to chemo weight at 225lbs and I am closing in on it at 237lbs right now. Almost all of my arthritic symptoms have cleared up with the weight loss and doing lots of stretchy yoga. It’s good, I tell myself. You are on your way, I reassure.
I feel small stirrings of excitement to be getting down below 225lbs on a health journey versus a death spiral. It’s a litany I repeat internally. Cancer relapse looms somewhere on another horizon but not yet…not yet.
Thank you for reading, friends.
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