Resolved.

IBEATCANCERIt seems to be hip to not make resolutions which is why I’ve decided to make a New Year’s resolution. After all I’m very concerned about being a trendsetter rather than following the trends. Actually I don’t care whether anyone follows me. Others may march to the beat of their own drummer, but I’m standing off to the side playing the hurdy-gurdy, which is really the only instrument I’m capable of playing. I’m that musically inept. I realized I should just give up any musical ambitions when I couldn’t even play the didgeridoo. Now before I hear from all those angry professional didgeridoo players let me clarify that it’s like the piano: it’s really easy to play, but difficult to play well, but that’s another story.

I understand why making resolutions has kind of fallen out of favor. Do you even remember the resolutions you made last year? I think they’re like “the check is in the mail” or “yes, I’ll respect you in the morning” or “club soda will get that out”. Most people, I think, make resolutions under duress. They feel pressured to come up with something to show they’re really intent on putting in some effort in the new year and then they fall off the wagon or slip out of the harness or whatever the appropriate metaphor is within a week of the new year starting.

As part of being hip I’m going for the ultimate cliche in resolutions: I’m going to lose weight. Not surprisingly this all goes back to my cancer diagnosis. It’s now more than a year and a half in the rearview mirror, but when I check my rearview all I can think is that objects appear larger than they should. It doesn’t help that not too long ago I was struggling to fit into a pair of jeans and the button above the zipper popped off, pinged off the wall, and hit me in the eye. This is really a resolution I should have made last year, but I’d been through a lot in 2014 and went a little easier on myself in 2015. Maybe too easy. And it’s not like I wasn’t aware of this even a year ago. During my last round of chemo I looked at a picture of myself and thought there were two of me, and that one of us had swallowed the other.

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Last week of chemo and fading in all the wrong places.

Everybody else who’s had cancer since before Hippocrates has lost weight, but me, being the iconoclast who marches to the tremolo of his own didgeridoo, had to go and gain it. The worst part is that two days after my diagnosis my wife put me on the bathroom scale and even though I hadn’t been on the scale in months I knew what my normal weight was. The cancer had eaten away at me to the tune of almost ten pounds. That actually sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Cancer is when your cells suddenly go beserk and reproduce like rabbits on fertility drugs and even if they’re drawing resources away from other parts of the body you’d think things would at least even out. Maybe I’ll ask Hippocrates about that later. Anyway my wife decided to fatten me up. She said, “I want you to eat like a Hobbit.” If you haven’t seen or read The Lord Of The Rings Hobbits typically start each day with breakfast followed by second breakfast then elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea, and I don’t know what comes after that but basically the life of a Hobbit is an endless buffet. The problem in those early days is there wasn’t a buffet in this world that could tempt me. This was not the cancer or even the chemo, which I’d barely started at that point. It was the stress of being diagnosed with cancer and not knowing what chemo would involve. Facing an uncertain future I was metaphorically and literally shrinking. Then the anti-nausea drugs kicked in and suddenly my daily schedule ran something like this:

9:00am-wake up

9:15am-Breakfast (Six pieces of French toast smeared with chocolate spread and crushed pecans)

10:15am-Second breakfast (Two sausage biscuits)

11:00am-Elevenses (Granola bar smeared with peanut butter)

12:00am-Lunch (Liverwurst sandwich, chips, milkshake, cookies)

2:00pm-Afternoon snack (Another milkshake, or maybe a can of smoked oysters or an eight ounce bag of almonds)

Dinner would be cobbled together from anything edible that was left in the house. I think one night I ate an entire bag of flour mixed with soy sauce, a can of vegetable shortening, two sticks of butter, a package of hot dogs, and a block of frozen spinach. At least I hit all the major food groups.

It didn’t help that in addition to turning me into a vacuum cleaner with teeth the chemo made me really tired and gave me an allergic reaction to sunlight so there was no way I could keep up my regular level of exercise. My wife tried to get me to exercise and I tried to listen but it was kind of hard to hear her over the constant sound of chewing.

Cancer is the gift that keeps on taking. I didn’t just lose parts of my body to the disease. I lost my health, my happiness, my ability to say I never get sick and my belief that I have no allergies. I lost my hair and while it’s mostly come back it’s thinner than it was before. I just wish the rest of me were too. I could just accept that this is how I am now, but I refuse to let it define me. I am who I am, and I’m determined that this time next year there will be less of me.

 

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15 Comments

  1. Ann Koplow

    You may not care whether anybody follows you, Chris, but I would follow you anywhere.

    Reply
    1. Christopher Waldrop (Post author)

      I appreciate that Ann, but it’s much more fun if you walk alongside me.

      Reply
      1. Ann Koplow

        I resolve to do that, Chris.

        Reply
  2. educationalmentorship

    I never make resolutions–my only real vice is drinking wine, and I have absolutely no intention of every giving that up. I’m glad that you’re in recovery–what you went through sounds pretty awful.

    Reply
    1. Christopher Waldrop (Post author)

      It was not fun but there are a few positive things that come from it. And not making resolutions seems like the best strategy. Hey, your wine habit probably makes you an all around better person. At the very least if it doesn’t hurt anyone there’s no reason to give it up.

      Reply
  3. Pingback: Resolved. – Freethinkers Anonymous | Cindy Dorminy's Writing World

  4. cindy dorminy

    Great post.

    Reply
  5. Gina W.

    Oh man, I could totally relate to this post. Not the cancer part. The weight part. People like to joke about how hard it is to lose weight after having a kid, but I’m telling you it’s the truth. Of course, the fact that I’m over forty and your metabolism is naturally supposed to slow down as you age doesn’t help. I quit weighing myself once I realized that my normal weight was almost the same as the day I went into the hospital to give birth. :/ Oh well, there are supposed to be some health benefits to being overweight. Like your bones are supposed to get stronger in over to pack around your added heft. So *high five* my friend on our lowered risk of bone fractures! Woo-hoo!

    Reply
    1. Christopher Waldrop (Post author)

      I never thought about there being benefits to being overweight. And thanks to my Eastern European genetics I’ve never been skinny exactly, but I’d like to get back to my normal weight, where I was before all this started. It would be nice to recover more of the lost muscle too, but it’s coming back. Yeah, doing all this after forty is definitely tougher. Or at least I think it is. I was slimmer, stronger, and healthier at forty than I was at twenty. Go figure.

      Reply
  6. Margot

    Stupid cancer! How long did you stay on your Hobbit diet? Do I understand correctly that the anti-nausea drugs and the chemo actually increased your appetite? And here I thought (in my stupidly sick fantasies) that if I were ever to get cancer, at least I’d be slim for a while.

    Good luck with your weight loss. You struggled with your weight when you were a kid, didn’t you? Weight issues can be such a mind fuck! It sounds like you are determined and sensible, though, and I have faith that you’ll succeed. Now, if only I could convince myself to lose weight without having to get cancer or something equally horrific….

    Reply
    1. Christopher Waldrop (Post author)

      I didn’t track it but I think I was on the Hobbit diet for at least a month. And even after scaling back I would still have a sausage biscuit every morning. I think the chemo drugs were responsible for a few bouts of nausea, but the anti-nausea drugs definitely sent my appetite into overdrive. I never smoked pot or took anything else illegal, but the prescribed anti-nausea drugs definitely gave me the munchies.
      Now that I think about it my raging appetite might also have been helped by a combination of stress and boredom. Once I got over the stress of not knowing what chemo would be like I had the stress of what would come after, and a lot of time out of work. Other peoples’ experiences vary, and if you ever do get cancer–although I hope you don’t–you may lose weight.
      There are definitely better diets though.

      Reply
  7. M. Firpi

    I hope you feel better soon. I know depression is making me eat too much. Depression can also be like cancer, at least I feel that way. At least with me, I feel as if something has been dying, and I have no desire to resurrect it either.

    Reply
    1. M. Firpi

      I’m trying to fight my appetite with distraction. I’ll let you know if it works. I still don’t know. I figure if I’m distracted I can start diminishing amounts of food.

      Reply
    2. Christopher Waldrop (Post author)

      Depression is definitely like cancer. At least I think the two share some symptoms in common, and both can be difficult to diagnose and treat. We also think of both being centered in a particular part of the body but both affect the whole body. Anyway I hope you come through your depression soon. I know it’s not possible to simply “snap out” of depression, as some people naively suggest, but I hope distraction helps.

      Reply
  8. M. Firpi

    Last night I substituted Ice cream with vanilla yogurt sweetened with Splenda, and sprinkled with nuts and dried fruits. Now that’s improvement because I was eating almost a whole pint of ice cream before. I’m also listening to podcasts out loud to see if that distracts me from thinking of food. I also drink a glass full of Benefiber first thing in the morning, to feel full and prevent constipation.

    Reply

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