Cancer CAN Make You Fat

The author of cancervacation.com wrote a great entry about how breast cancer treatment makes most women gain weight--especially if they get the pretreatment steroids for over a year with Herceptin, as I did.

She's right that it sucks. She's also right that it's an element of treatment that most people don't even know about and one there isn't any support for.

When the medicines make you bald, you can get free wigs from many sources, and most insurance will reimburse a "cranial prothesis." The ACS helps you fake eye hair and cure dry skin with their "Look Good, Feel Better" sessions, complete with a fabulous goodie bag of top-name cosmetics. But you're on your own to remake your wardrobe several times through treatment as your body changes more than a teenager's.

I actually was able to put a good portion of my weight gain to good use in building a new DIEP breast after treatment. But, yeah, I've got extra fat elsewhere that I never encountered before. I hate to shop for clothes because I gravitate to things that I would have looked good in before cancer, and I usually don't like and can't easily identify styles that would look good on me now.

Most people have been kind enough not to mention the weight thing, but I remember when a nurse called to do a preop check for my port removal surgery. She started off by asking, "Have you gained a lot of weight?"

Pardon me; who are you?

She said my file was flagged because I'd porked out--of course she didn't use those words, but that's what I heard. I imagined a red flashing computer screen and a hooting car alarm: We've got a fattie here!

So that bothered me a little. And this back fat perplexes me in a constant kind of way. I think I'm actually going to ask my plastic surgeon to get rid of it and generally spruce up the whole middle section during the second stage of my DIEP. That's if I can get over a crippling fear of more surgery, however minor.

I called to schedule an appointment to start working toward DIEP stage II the other day.

I'll keep you posted.