Hoooooooo Boy: Cancer + Weight Gain/Loss

 Based on the title of this entry this should go without saying, but I will be talking about the very touchy subjects of weight loss and weight gain, as I have experienced it within the last year. And if you know anything about my candidness in writing thus far, I'm not going to hold back about it. I just want to warn you in case reading about weight isn't your thing, I'll see you in the next one. Love you. 💕

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My weight has always hovered around 130 pounds, ever since I became an adult. In 2013, I got really engrossed in fitness and counting calories (as I feel a lot of us did when MyFitnessPal became a huge fitness "tool"). I worked out to Jillian Michaels DVDs every single day. Workouts entitled "30 Day Shred" and "Ripped in 30" frequented my television screen every day after I got home from an 8 hour shift at a Greek restaurant, where I would eat basically every meal from. I knew exactly what I was putting into my body to a point where it was borderline obsessive. 

Between July 4 and August-sometime, I had lost between 20 and 30 pounds. I weighed 118 pounds at my lowest. I loved the way I looked. I had definition in my muscles and my clothes fit so much better than they ever had before. People noticed. They complimented me left and right. 

This attention to nutrition and commitment to fitness didn't last forever. And when fitness and nutrition fall away, so does the body that was earned through them. About a year later, I was still thin, but I wasn't the same toned, defined, muscular Molly I had been just a year prior. It broke me. Most people probably don't know this about me, but I have struggled with the way I look for most of my late 20s until now.

The reason I'm telling you all of this in such detail is to give you a baseline for how all of this relates to my cancer diagnosis.

When I first started noticing the UTI symptoms in July of 2021, I was at that average weight of around 135 pounds. I had run a marathon a few years prior. I was actually pretty happy with the way that I looked, when I looked in the mirror. 

When the diagnosis came, I had a giant tumor growing inside of me, so obviously I gained weight. I looked massively pregnant. As I described before, the worse the tumor got, the more my body looked like it had been Jet-Puffed or manufactured by Memory Foam. 

Once the tumor was removed, the weight dropped just as quickly.

I entered the hospital at around 135 pounds, and left at around 120. I lost 15 pounds in two weeks. Of course this is because they fed me a diet of mostly IV fluids as my body adjusted to the stent that was placed during the first week (that turned out to be useless) and ultimately a new way of disposing waste (through my stomach) during the second week.

Drinking tiny cups of apple juice like I was a 4th grader in a cafeteria was one of the only things that brought me joy. Broth and Jell-O were also included in a liquid diet, and I gotta say I really liked drinking the broth they brought me every morning, afternoon, and night. You always see patients eating Jell-O in the hospital on TV shows and movies, but not me. I got so accustomed to it that when I was discharged and living with my parents in Wisconsin, my mom would make broth for me and I would put it in a little travel mug and go for walks in the chill fall afternoons. 

When I could eat solid foods during my hospital stay, the options were limited. I mostly craved grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. I made friends with the woman who took food orders and delivered meals to patients. On the night that I had my port surgery (a port, for those who don't know, is a special device implanted into your chest for easier injections and blood draw), I didn't get out of the surgery until after the kitchen had closed, so I didn't end up getting my grilled cheese and tomato soup that day. I hadn't been allowed to eat all day because of the surgery, so I was ravenously hungry. My friend from the kitchen came to visit and told me she tried to get them to make me my meal but they couldn't wait that long. The nurse on call ended up giving me a sad, bland turkey sandwich that was literally just turkey and bread, and one packet of mayonnaise. I ended up taking two bites of it and then gave up and ate a cookies for dinner, courtesy of my friend Kelly who had sent them in the mail that week.

Well that was a lovely tangent about my hospital diet, but mostly beside my point.

Right before I was discharged, I remember looking at myself in the mirror. I avoided doing this most days, because I was literally afraid of the way my body looked. Not only the extreme swelling, but now I had a colostomy bag, and an intense horror movie-esque scar trailing from above my belly button down into my pubic area, with staples running along the entire incision that made it look like a giant centipede.

During this rare examination of what my body looked like post-surgery, I noticed that my boobs had shrunken significantly. Like, significantly. Historically, my boobs are the first to go when I lose weight, so this was unsurprising. But what was so jarring about it was that 1. It had only been 2 weeks since I had entered the hospital and 2. The rest of my body was still mostly swollen and puffy, so the juxtaposition was odd to behold. My face was gaunt. My eyes looked sunken in, which I only noticed because my eyelids looked massive, which they never had before. 

During my first few months of living at home in Green Bay, I had a nurse come to help me get accustomed to my colostomy bag. Changing a colostomy bag seemed like an academic event en par with chess or...I don't know, dissecting a frog in biology class at first. So having someone come out and show me the ropes was comforting, but also, incredibly uncomfy. Imagine a stranger coming into your home, and then asking to look at your butt hole for 20 minutes.

I know that's an over-simplification of what the experience actually was, but...you get my point.

My nurse's name was Christina. We got along pretty much immediately. She told it like it was, was positive but realistic, and went along with my dark humor right off the bat. She told me that I needed to gain weight if I wanted to make it through chemo, and that I should weigh myself every morning to make sure I wasn't losing any weight.

So for months, I came downstairs to the kitchen, found the sleek black scale next to the bathroom, and stepped on, waiting for the number to appear. I'd write it down in a composition notebook on the counter and then sit in the reclining chair in the Family Room, where my parents would bring me coffee, yogurt, and an omelette with a smiley face made out of Cholula. (Yes, I am spoiled.)

For a while, the scale didn't break 120 pounds. We would celebrate whenever the number would increase, but it would only go up maybe a tenth of a pound at a time. 

It is icky, and I know it is icky, but in the back of my mind, there was a small voice that would whisper: 

You're skinny, now.

Before you flinch or groan or grimace, I am completely aware that my body type could probably always have been described as "skinny". But when you're conditioned to believe that anything above a size 4 is overweight and a size 8 is "Plus Size" (the 90's really fucked us up), it's hard to just wish away those body image issues and intrusive thoughts. 

There was a part of me that did not want to gain any weight back. I wanted to stay right where I was and just make sure I didn't lose any more weight. 

But I did, during the first round of chemo. I was unable to keep anything down that whole weekend, and the number on the scale revealed a shocking 116 pounds. 

Every time I went to the hospital for a scan, or an exam, or whatever, I heard different versions of the same phrase: 

"120 pounds? I haven't been 120 since middle school!" 

"Your port sticks out so much - it's because you're so skinny!" 

"You're lucky, if you'd have been any skinnier you'd have had to drink the contrast." 

I don't think the techs who said these things fully knew my situation. But every time I heard them it took everything I had not to blurt out, "Yeah, that's the cancer!" Or, "Cancer'll do that to ya." But I always kept my mouth shut.

My mom took my to the store to get new clothes, in a size that fit my new body. Pants that were small enough to fit me, but loose enough not to disturb David when he needed to do his business. Shirts that wouldn't drown my tiny frame. Dresses that were loose enough not to graze my painful incision but small enough to be flattering on my 120 pound body. 

I was able to wear these new clothes for about 6 months. 

Once I moved back to Chicago full-time and started a new chemotherapy treatment (FOLFIRI), things began to go in the other direction. The new treatment was rough, and made me feel like butts for days. So my oncologist prescribed a steroid for me to take orally every day for 3 days, which did seem to work. 

But it also caused me to gain weight. Fast. 

I would buy larger clothes one day, and then a month later try on that same piece of clothing and it wouldn't fit anymore.

I tried on pants today that fit me in Spring and now I can barely fit them over my thighs.

In the past 6 months I have gained nearly 60 pounds.

It's difficult not to see my body as a misshapen blob these days. Add to the weight gain the colostomy bag that is always protruding from my abdomen, and it just adds insult to injury. I don't recognize myself anymore. 

I'm not posting this for sympathy. I don't need you to get into the comments to tell me I'm beautiful or that my body is fighting to keep me alive - I know all of these things.

I think I'm mostly just trying to draw attention to weight gain after a cancer diagnosis, because I feel like most television shows or movies show cancer patients losing massive amounts of weight. Not everyone who is sick, looks sick.

Also, can we just stop making comments about peoples' bodies? I think people assume that because someone is thin that they won't mind a few backhanded "compliments". That it's only body shaming if someone is fat. You never know what someone is going through, so just....don't, okay?

Anyway. This is a pretty long post, so if you made it this far, thank you. 

See you in the next one.

xoxo, 

Gossip Girl

Cancer Kid

Molly