From Hand to Mouth

After last week's whole pants incident I was pretty down. I had some great comments and reminders that this is all about being healthy and to keep trying. 

So I'm going to. 

But not until I decided to eat 1/3 of a sheet cake (not all at once) a quart of ice cream (again, not all at once), a large chocolate bar (in 2 'servings') and 8 cans of ginger ale.

 I was? am still? depressed about the whole thing and that's how us food addicts deal with emotions; we eat. 

Saturday night, as I ate my second piece of cake, I kept thinking this was nuts!  I want to lose weight, but I keep eating. I don't think I'm overeating, but I must be. Not to mention my choices. 

So you can follow me on My Fitness Pal as Shevyblue22. 

Accountability.

Food tracking. 

Exercising tracking. 

Black and white. 

No excuses. 

I want to get to 175 still, so that's my goal. When I weighted myself Saturday night, post cake, I was 214. Fuck. Really?  I lost 2.6 pounds overnight (goodbye cake!) and this morning I was 210.2. 

I am tracking everything that goes in my mouth, while I'm doing it. I'm stuck in the office for 3 weeks, which should increase my stamina a bit (or totally do me in) so that I can start walking at the gym when I go back to working from home. 

I'm on the better side of this and I know I just need to keep going. 

Confessional; Seeking Forgiveness

I feel like I should be in the confessional at church asking my priest for some sin that I've committed.  My sin?  Gaining weight back, after working so hard ot lose it.

I had to try on pants yesterday because I'm working at the office for a couple of days and yoga/jeans are not acceptable.  None of them fit.  I could get none of them over my ass.  None. 

It makes me so frustrated to see that I had come so far and now I'm headed back in the wrong direction.  Call me Judgy McJudgerson, but when I used to read weight loss bloggers talk about a significant weight gain, I judged.  They fell off the food wagon and couldn't get back on.  I thought that I was immune to regaining my weight.  I have the gastric band, I have a good relationship with food and with the gym, I have a supportive husband. 

And I was so freaking proud of myself before surgery because although my gym going was sporadic, I had learned how to maintain my weight.  No I wasn't losing, but I also wasn't gaining. I thought I had such a good, reformed relationship with food and how to eat to maintain weight. 

And yet here I am, 6 months after this roller coaster of possible breast cancer and mastectomies and recovery and I am a good 15 pounds heavier than I was pre-surgery.  My body shape has changed, both because of my weight gain and my surgery.  None of my pants fit me, other than yoga pants.  I don't feel good about myself and my body and I don't fucking know how to make it all better.  I just want it all better.  I want my body and life that I had before it was all mashed up with biopsies and surgery and sitting around.

If I confess all my sins to you, can I get back to that place?  If I say 12 Hail Marys and study the food chart, will I be forgiven?  Can I forgive myself?  I'm frustrated and sad and I feel like I have no control over what is going on in my life!

And then it occurs to me that maybe that's why I'm eating.  Maybe my food relationship isn't all that great and I'm eating because I can't control the rest of my life.  But I can sure control that bag of Muddie Buddies Chex Mix going in my mouth.  Maybe that's the lesson in all of this.  I know putting that food in my mouth isn't making the control and emotions any better.  I know this.  It's not making the fact that I had both breasts removed and have fake boobs any better.  It's certainly not making my post surgical body image any better.  It's not making anything better.  Maybe that's the lesson in this.

I need to continue to accept that I am a disorganized eater with a broken relationship with food.  Instead of pushing the emotions away by trying to eat them, I need to recognize what I'm putting in my mouth at all times and why I'm eating it.  Instead of eating my life, I need to talk it out or write it out or exercise it out, hell even scream it out into nothingness.  But I can't continue to eat it.

Maybe there is a lesson in all of this.  Maybe I can ask for forgiveness.  But not from a priest, from myself.  I need to forgive myself and it's ok to do that.  My relationship with food will always be broken, but I have choices in how I deal with it.  Maybe the lesson is forgiveness and choices and learning to allow myself to have these periods and chose to get myself out of them.

So I bought pants.  And I hate them.  I absolutely fucking hate them with a passion.  They fit, they're nice pants, but I will always hate them because they are a size or 2 larger than what I was wearing before.

2 Steps Forward, 1 Step back

Surgery on Friday went well, at least I think so.  If I talked to the doctor after surgery, I have no memory of it.  Pete says that he told them it went well and everything was good. 

The large lump on my left chest area was dying fatty tissue.  He took out most of it, but said that if he took it all, there would be an indent and he didn't want that.  This worries me to be honest.  The Lump must be directly on my muscle and it presses when I try to exercise my chest.  It would actually shoot pain up through my neck and make that muscle pretty sore.  But I guess I need to trust that this surgery fixed most of the problems.

He also decided to fix the ugly scar and take the sebaceous cyst on my chest.  The thing is like a cat and has multiple lives.  Every surgeon has said that they got it all out.  Let's hope that he got it all this time.

I'm back to my back really hurting in the morning from the way that I must be sleeping.  The pain from the surgery sites wakes me up at night and I have to take another pain pill.  I'm trying to go without during the day and today is the first day back to working after surgery.  I'm cutting it short at 4 hours.  But I was supposed to have a full day tomorrow and Wednesday.  I'm not sure that I'm up to that and hopefully my co-workers understand this.

I feel like I took 2 steps forward in recovery and could do lots of things and feel pretty good and now I'm back to limited motions, pain and soreness.

I Am One of Many

I remember after my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Our family became involved in raising money for Susan Komen and American Cancer Society.  We went on walks and meetings and held events.  It was important to support my Mom in what she needed to do at that time.

I find myself taking a similar path.  And it occurred to me that what I really want is to know that I am not alone.  It'd not that I wish this on anyone, but for me life is about knowing that I'm not alone and making some connections.  I need to know that someone walked the same path I did, before I did.  That someone can tell me the way to go or give me hints on how to get to where I want to be.  This is what I did when I had my abnormal biopsy and when I wanted to lose weight; I reached out.

With my surgery looming on Friday 9/20/13, I find myself desperate to connect with others who have walked my path.  I've connected with FORCE and registered for what I could there.  Yesterday I Googled "Previvor" and started clicking links.  There are women out there who are Previvors, but I have yet to find a woman who isn't BRCA positive and still chose to have the mastectomy.  I sometimes wonder if I am an anomaly?  A one of a kind?

These are the blogs/sites that I found:

Previvor Generation:  A woman who's had mastectomy and is in the process of reconstruction.  She's honest.  And I love that.

High Risk Humor:  This woman was partially though her process and considering therapy.  She last posted in March so I'm not sure what happened.

Previvor:  This 23 year old woman documented her journey in video.  I'm amazed at the willingness women have to share and this is no exception.  I can't wait to watch her videos, probably after my surgery.

Three Sister Survival:  These 3 sisters were all diagnosed with breast cancer within the same year!  Talk about family history and risk of genetic cancer.

Brave Bosom:  This woman talks about all of the various aspects of BRCA, testing, media, insurance...  She is a wonderful writer and makes me think of things that I had not previously thought of.

Bright Pink:  I've not heard of this before, why?  They are an advocacy group for women who focus on the risk reduction and early detection of breast and ovarian cancer in young women while providing support for high-risk individuals.  Me!  I sent an email about an event they are having in Minneapolis on 9/25/13.  I'm hoping that I feel well enough to attend.  Incredibly, I received a response almost immediately that the national contact was forwarding my email to the local contact.  I received a response that said if I'm not up to the event next week. to let her know when I am feeling better and she will meet me for coffee.

Still?  I am searching for that one woman.  That woman who isn't BRCA positive, didn't have cancer, but because of other risk factors chose to have the mastectomy.  Surely I'm not the only one?

FORCE

3 weeks ago I received an email from one of the ladies from the support group that I went to.  They were going to have a table at the Minnesota Lynx basketball game and needed volunteers to help.  I immediately responded that I would help.  Without thinking about it.

The more that I thought about it, the more I wanted to do this.  I don't feel like a fake any longer when it comes to my surgery.  I feel caught in the middle.  I'm not a cancer survivor, I'm a previvor and that comes with it's own set of issues, emotional and physical.  I feel the need to connect with someone like me, to talk to someone who understands me.  Someone who made the same decision I did - surgery to prevent cancer. 

I showed up early and the group of us set up tables in the halls of the center, where game goers would walk through.  The posters showed women and had questions about genetic testing, breast cancer and the signs of ovarian cancer.  We had stickers for kids and business card sized information for adults.  The Lynx gave us some t-shirts to give away.

Our mission was to hand out information and answer questions.  There were members of FORCE.org, peer educators, women from Susan Komen organization, women from the MN Alliance for Ovarian Cancers, genetic counselors and people like me who had gone through testing and surgery.

You know what?  It was damn hard to give out that information.  Women would joke that they didn't need cancer.  They would turn their heads and not acknowledge us.  They would say they knew all about it.  The only time that they were willing to walk up to us is when we had the T-shirts or they knew one of us by the table.

I was disheartened.  Here I was ready to share my story after much soul searching and no one wanted to hear it.  And these are mostly women at this game, women of all ages.  One of the peer educators talked to me and said that about 70% of people don't want to know if they have a genetic predisposition to cancer.  They'd rather just live life.  At 27 that was me.  But now, at 43?  I wanted to know, needed to know that I was doing something to reduce my risk other than mammograms. 

So when I got home, I signed up to volunteer on the FORCE Organization website.  I don't know what all that entails, but I left that basketball game wanting to share my story with more women and wanting to support and be more involved with women like me.