It began when I was around forty-eight. The waistline started creeping up. I've had a difficult time getting dressed for years but my waist is about the only thing that DID creep. Most of the rest of me stayed the same. But I blamed myself, my diet, my husband, my ankle, my knee, my mother... okay the list was long, but I never considered cancer.
What I did know is that I haven't zipped a pair of pants in ten years. I'm around a size 10 in the butt but (last year) a sixteen in the waist. Okay, folks.. that is downright pregnant, but I never thought of it being a health problem ---> just a fatness issue. So, I did what everyone else did. I exercised my bloody brains out even to the point of permanently ruining my ankle. I now have chronic tendonitis there, which is swollen twice its size most days. My waist was around 33",then 35", 36", then 38", 39", and last January at 40" I panicked. My belly no longer felt fat but "wrong." It was impossible to tie my shoes as if there was something in there. I was the last person to jump up to grab a grandchild because it was very difficult for me to hop out of a chair. I had horrible heartburn, but I figured that I was fat, so fat people probably get heartburn, right?
Denial.
Then I had two friends tell me to go to another doctor. I balked. My doctor was fine, I thought. He said that I had a lipoma (a fatty tumor) inside my belly that was nothing. He had felt such things before. Then, I saw a photo of myself on my annual trip to Sonoma and I was horrified. Somehow, my mind wanted to think it was nothing... but that wasn't true. There was a reason my waistline was huge and the only thing that could get rid of it was six rounds of the strongest chemotherapy they had available.
Non-Hodgkins is a very slow growing cancer. It took years to develop into a football-size, and I - all the while - insisted that I was just fat. As it lowered my self-esteem further and further I found myself becoming isolated knowing that even wearing a simple pair of jeans was impossible. I found myself at Target at the maternity section passing it off as a gift for a daughter-in-law who wasn't yet pregnant. I was desperate. I did so many planks that my arms and abs are like guns, but nothing was stopping this bloodsucker inside me from taking over. I couldn't even paint my own toenails.
My NHL beast completely surrounded my abdominal aorta, was headed toward my spleen/liver/bone and I could have died easily with the amount of cardio I was doing. It scares me now just thinking about it. The good news is that my heart is strong from years of being at the gym. One of the biggest fears of chemo is the destruction of heart valves and BAM, you drop dead afterwards of a heart attack. That is common. I've always worked out - even when I was in the depths of despair of my belly-besity. After I began chemo in February 2011, my waist ballooned up to a 46.
46" of pure unadulterated hell.
Put a bald head and skinny legs on a 46" waist and you have a nice stork. I was horrified.
Since then I have lost 8" in my waist... which is still large but the inflammation (oncologist said) would take a while. The chemo gives it to you... and I get chemo again on April 25th. My petscan is April 17th and all I can do is hope for the best. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't watch for my waist growing again. It used to be for vanity. Now it is for my life.
My cancer does not go into remission. I will have it forever, but they can keep it at bay by profylactic chemo drugs for several years. I do not feel the terror of dying anymore. I know in my heart that I'm not in charge here on this Earth, and that in itself gives me peace. The cancer is going to do what the cancer is going to do... one way or the other.
FYI: If your waistline is over 35" it is one of the biggest signs for Ovarian cancer and Lymphoma, so watch it monthly. If it grows... ask for a CT scan. No. I change my mind on that...
Demand it.
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