A series of serious posts #1

Diet and Body Image

I've been sitting on the couch reading other blogs and whatnot for the past hour and realize I have a lot to say about diet, body image, and how that corresponds to head/neck cancer. This may be more a useful post to any other head/neck cancer patients out there, than a useful post to my family/friends.... but here it goes.

I have dealt with body image and being overweight for a LONG time. I crossed 100 lbs in 5th grade and just kept climbing. It took a lot of watching my diet and exercising right to finally cross back into the normal BMI range about 1.5 years ago. I was still slowly decreasing, about 2 lbs/month with a plan to get to the "perfect weight" (the middle of the normal BMI range) by 2010. I was all on track, until I had my recurrence.

When we decided to do radiation and chemo after surgery, I was told to bulk up. Radiation for head and neck cancer patients almost always results in a feeding tube. (I'd guess 95% of the time) The damage to the lining of your mouth and throat along with the inability to swallow and the loss of taste makes it nearly impossible to eat. I'm on a pill, a shot, a mouth swish, and the honey to try to prevent the sores/swallowing getting that bad, but the loss of taste is inevitable. I heard a story of a 5'3" woman dropping from 165 to 90lb during the 6 week treatment because she refused a feeding tube.

Yet as scary as all of that is, I had/have such psychological issues with putting on the weight to bulk up. With many ensure supplements, I managed to put on 8 lbs during the few weeks before treatment began. After my first round of chemo and all the nausea, I lost 6 of those lbs in two days. Since then, I've lost another 1. I am actually happy to be back where I was when I started....and I shouldn't be! I need to keep weight on! I weigh myself every other day and when my weight has gone down by only like a half pound, I'm happy, MORE happy than when the weight goes up. That should not be the case. I am still in the portion of my treatment where eating is "easy" and I should be using this to maintain or gain weight, but I just can't bring myself to do it. The pressure to be thin is so ingrained that the idea of losing 75 lbs in 6 weeks doesn't seem that horrible. Yes, I said it. I know how ridiculous that is. I know how horrible that is for your body. I know I will continue to force myself to drink ensure.... but until I cross that "perfect weight", I'm not going to feel good doing it.