Cancer's Body

Had 2 appointments today back to back, and I’m putting this here instead of in the Cancer blog because it’s not so much the Cancer itself I need to talk about, but more… the side effects of it on my body and what I have to get through in my head.

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See, before all this— Cancer stuff started, I had finally (for the first time in 20 years) reached a point where I really and truly learned to love and accept and cherish the body Ihave. I’d memorized it’s shape, caressed it with my hands, at night if I was feeling a little of the old body-hating ways come back, I’d soothe myself to sleep by running my hands around the roundness of my belly- memorizing the dips and valleys of my stretch marks, raising fingers over the leftover scars on my breast… left behind by years of self-mutilation caused by the sheer force of my self-hatred. And I’d remind myself that thisi s my body. For better or worse, whether I wanted to change it or not- this is my body.

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And I came to be at peace with it’s roundness. With the softness of my skin, the cellulite on my thighs, the dimples of my ample ass. I learned, one piece at a time (truly) to love the body that carries me from place to place. I learned (especially as my disease raged silently forward) to appreciate my stunning good health. The strength of my legs and arms, the smooth breathing of my lungs, the steady and healthy pumping of my heart. My clockwork blood pressure, healthy appetite. I learned about my body and I loved it.

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I stopped spending all of my time wishing, wanting, trying to lose weight. I recognized that perhaps the 40 lbs I lost but couldn’t break past was a plateau for a reason. After all… even before I’d lost it- I was equally healthy. And when it came back, when my appetite went rampant, and the pain of my unknown tumor left me struggling to dull the raging pain with anything but food, I learned to accept that too. To accept that I didn’t have control, and that my body needed something I hadn’t wanted to let it have.

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But then the Cancer came. The tumor. The pain. And in the days before my surgery, in the weeks before it all went to hell— everything changed. I couldn’t eat. Not really. 2 weeks of cream soups and proteins… carb free because the pain of trying to digest fruit, vegetables, and carbs was so horrifying it would send me crying and rocking into my bed for days. And the weight loss started then.

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Today, at both appointments I got weighed (they were in the same building, but one was with the radiation guy for the first time, and the other was with my oncologists PA). The last time I was in, I had lost only a few pounds since surgery. But today the scale showed something much more drastic. I have lost 12 pounds. 12. A weight loss I’ve never had except on rare occasions of severe deprivation and dieting. I am almost back to where I was in 2010 when I was actively TRYING to lose weight.

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But the thing is, I spent so much time loving that body. That 40lb heavier body with all it’s seeming drawbacks. And it’s not just the weight loss that messes with my head— my shape is so different now. There is still a hole in my belly above my belly button. Currently filled with the foam from the wound vac which suctions away the raw tissue of my incision, which protects me from the infectious abscess that necessitated it in the first place. But there are also new scars. Slashes and dots where scopes and tools were inserted during my surgery to help guide my Oncologist as she removed an 8cm tumor that had grown into and out of my uterus (also removed).

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My whole shape has changed. And at night sometimes I try to fall back on my old acceptance trick. To go back to memorizing this new landscape. So that I can make peace with my gutted self. So that I can accept these changes and learn to maybe love them too… 30+ pounds less than when we started more than a month ago… so that I can accept these changes and learn to maybe love them too… this new shape and curve and dip. The line that mediates between my belly and my lower abdomen. What once was smooth and round now… interrupted. My weight loss leaving odd pockets in what was once a soft landscape that curved out and then back down in solid state.

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But I cannot use that tool just yet. Because there is the wound-vac… with it’s foam, and tape, and tubing in the way. Because some of those scar marks are still tender, because there is a patch of irritated skin that I should not touch over-much.

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And so I struggle to come to grips with this new and still-changing body in the mirror when I stop to shower. But it’s not my body anymore. It’s Cancer’s body. It is my tumor’s body. It is a fearful body: That will no doubt change more, and more drastically in the coming months as I’m bombarded not only with chemo but with radiation.

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And as I struggle to accept this fluid and changing vision of my own self, I struggle too with other’s ignorance. With other’s well-engrained ideas of the social acceptability (or rather… not) of fatness. I have actually had someone comment on my weight loss to congratulate me. Another to try and call it a silver lining of my ordeal. As thought it were a disciplinary change, a choice… or even— wanted.

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I struggle. I struggle more now than I have in a very long time. To try and accept what seems to change on a daily basis. To stand in front of a mirror naked, and ignore the tube of my machine and try,try to connect this new and fluctuating body with the person that lives within it.

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I have to believe I will rediscover the peace I once had. In stages, in steps. I have to believe that wherever I end up when this is all over, that I will rediscover my peace with whatever that body may be.

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But right now, I struggle. And I cry. And I miss my solid fatness, the well-known paths my fingers and palms once traveled late at night. I miss the fat and healthy body that carried me through 30 years of life. I miss the body that Cancer continues to quickly and mercilessly destroy. I miss the girl I was… not so long ago. And all the space that she occupied- physically, mentally, emotionally.

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Right now, I still do not recognize the person I’m becoming. This body does not feel like mine anymore. This body belongs to Cancer.