My Own Celebration

Yesterday, while working very hard to avoid working very hard, I stumbled over a new (to me) blog – Scientiae.  Dedicated to blog posts by women in STEM fields, monthly postings address subjects relevant to women in these areas (gender roles, hurdles, and some good stuff too).  This month’s carnival was titled “Celebrations” and I missed it, having just discovered this whole thing.  But, as I was reading the carnival today on Rocket Scientista, I thought about some of my own things I have to celebrate and, well, I’m always up for some good time-wasting.  So.

Big, and small, celebrations for me:

First, the big one.  I’ve posted about it before, but I’m (now more than) one year out from surgery, officially marking one cancer-free year.  It’s been quite the roller coaster and I’m definitely still adjusting to this “new normal,” as so many survivors refer to life after cancer.  Yesterday was a tough day for me and I really can’t tell you why, except that I have these days now and then.  But then today, I nearly forgot to go to a routine follow-up appointment with my surgeon.  That has to be a good sign, right?  Maybe I am finally starting to move past all this.

Second, a successful conference.  Actually, I have mixed feelings over the conference I attended last week.  On the whole I don’t think I got as much out of it as I have from previous conferences.  Many of the talks I wanted to go to overlapped and while some of them were totally unrelated and a little overlap is to be expected, many were very similar and I doubt I’m the only one who had to chose between talks relevant to his/her research.  (Yeah, that’s right, I’m not going to use “hir” or any other annoying non-word.  I hate those.)  On the other hand, a number of people did actually visit my Saturday-morning poster.  Many gave good feedback on the study I presented and served as a good sounding board for changes I’d like to implement in my dissertation.  So that, ladies and gentlemen, is a good thing.  I also think I made a pretty good impression on a few important people – also a good thing.

Third, a publication!  It was a long-time coming, but my first PhDville paper was accepted a couple weeks ago and will hopefully hit the presses soon.  That’s pub #3 for me, but the first directly related to my current line of research.

Fourth and fifth, some really horrible eating the past 10 days has not turned into weight gain and my hair is noticeably longer.  Hurray for small victories!

Double Standards

I’m sitting in the airport writing this post and since I’m stubborn and not willing to pay for wi-fi (especially now that I have my smart phone) I have no idea when I’ll actually upload and post.

People-watching is a favorite pastime of mine and large airports are definitely in the top three places to do so (the other two being malls and amusement parks).  This is an international airport in a large, diverse city so people from all walks of life are strolling through.  I’ve seen some fabulous outfits – like the homemade dress pieced together in a patchwork of various, multi-colored fabrics – and possibly even more fabulous hair – the half-blonde, half-bright orange that went along with that dress.  There are parents running through the terminal sometimes literally dragging their small children along behind them, and even one college-aged guy on a skateboard.  I know of business travelers who will get in their daily run in the terminal during a long layover. Haven’t seen any runners today, though.  A Muslim woman in traditional dress just walked by, and an Orthodox Jew passed her on the people mover.  How’s that for contrast?

The real topic of today’s post isn’t airport people, though.  The Boy and I went to another state to visit his family this weekend.  As promised, there was some drama, but all in all the weekend was decent. His sister and brother-in-law were in town from their Southern state and the whole group of us celebrated his dad’s birthday.  His dad is a Navy vet and this year his birthday fell on Memorial day, so it was a big celebration all around.

My diet was a disaster this weekend.  Part of that stemmed from the birthday celebration, but not all of it.  Like most Americans, most of The Boy’s family members are overweight or obese.  Because my research interests (and casual interests) involve obesity, weight control, and comorbidities, I’m always very careful with how I discuss my research around them and try to lead by example rather than anything else.  I don’t let the trips disrupt my running schedule (though I usually will move my long run earlier in the week to avoid getting lost in an unfamiliar area) and try to maintain some semblance of my normal diet.  Being a vegetarian makes that somewhat tricky, especially when everyone wants to go out to eat and I don’t know the restaurants in the area (I know – use the internet).   His mom always makes a big deal of “not knowing” what to feed me, though I always make an effort to tell her I’m happy with a salad (and truly, I am).  This weekend it escalated.  The very first night, when the topic of dinner came up and I made my usual salad statement, his mom looked squarely at me and said I have to eat more than a salad because I’m “just too skinny.”  Now, I am slim.  My weight, however, is squarely in the healthy range and I’m reasonably muscular.  I’m fit, I’m strong, and I’m as healthy as a cancer survivor can be.  I know all of this.

Regardless, that statement was the start of a weekend full of picking on me about my weight.  Why is it, exactly, that it’s ok to pick on people for being skinny when it isn’t ok to do the same when someone is fat?  Hello, double standard.  So as I said, my diet was awful.  Waffles or bagels with butter for breakfast, pop-tarts for snacks, dessert every night.  Thank goodness we grilled corn, if we hadn’t I think I’d have had 2 servings of fruits and veggies combined all weekend.    Yesterday, as we were driving back home, I put the two together.  My horrible diet was at least somewhat related, way deep down in there, to being picked on about my weight all weekend.  So again I ask – what gives?  Why do we all say that it’s inappropriate to pick on someone because of their weight and then turn around and do it to a “skinny” person?

Time to Shape Up!

Well.  I think this is the fourth version of this post I have started.  Each one has gotten ridiculously long with far more detail than anyone really wants to know, so I’m starting over once again.

It’s difficult to talk about how cancer has effected my life without just going on for days.  To be as brief as I can, I’ll just say that the shock of being diagnosed, the physical and psychological trauma of treatment, and the recovery and recuperation process has altered my lifestyle in some pretty big ways.

Like anyone else, my diet and exericse habits have changed over the course of my life.  These past few years I’ve settled into a routine of running moderate weekly mileage (usually between 20 and 25 miles per week), training for random races here and there, and eating a relatively healthy vegetarian diet.  Over the course of those years I lost about 25 pounds and reached a weight my body was really happy with – that elusive weight that can be maintained without much effort.  My running improved by leaps and bounds thanks to the combination of consistent training and losing that dead weight.  Going out and running a personal record in every race I entered was a ton of fun.  Of course that was bound to end eventually, but I enjoyed it while I lasted.

Surgery knocked off an additional 3 pounds real quick, and then over the course of chemo I gained a total of 10 pounds.  Part of that came from changes in my diet – I couldn’t eat fresh produce when my blood counts tanked; another part came from changes in exercise.  Taxol caused a lot of bone and joint pain and forced me to stop running.  A few weeks later my hemoglobin tanked and I couldn’t bike anymore, either.

When I got beyond chemo and back to exercising, a few of those extra pounds came right off.  Those last 4.5 are stubborn though, let me tell you.  Even beyond the extra 4.5, though, my body composition has changed and this is what I don’t like.  I’m squishy.

So, now that the semester has ended and my clashes between academia and fitness can hopefully be managed a little better it’s time to get back in shape.  I’m a bit worried that this pain in my left foot might be a stress fracture, so that could make the exercise portion a little trickier.  If it is not broken, I have a goal race planned for July and another in September.  Both are the same distance, so hopefully I can focus on getting faster rather than just completing the distance.  That will require increased weekly mileage – I’d like to hang somewhere between 30 and 40 mpw and see where that gets me.  Also, I hope to add swimming to my routine, giving me a little more balance and some impact-free cardio.

In terms of diet, there’s some research out there that suggests that women with triple negative breast cancer fare well on a very low-fat, high fruit and vegetable diet.  Between surgery and chemo last summer, I successfully ate a diet with less than 25% of total calories from fat.  The goal was actually less than 20% but I discovered two things relatively quickly.  First, it’s really hard to get a reasonable amount of protein with so little fat and I couldn’t maintain my body weight.  Second, it’s just plain hard to do.  Now that I’ve read the studies myself, I think I’m happy sticking with 25% fat and as much produce as I can manage to swallow.  With the dietary restrictions I had during treatment, though, it was just too hard to maintain that diet.  Now that treatment is behind me and I’m feeling more like myself, it’s time to get this back under control.

So there’s the action plan.  Run.  Eat a sensible diet.  Easy enough, right?  There’s no reason my summer academic schedule should keep me from achieving these goals – it will never be more flexible.  We’ll see!  The summer of healthy habits starts tomorrow.

That Will NEVER Happen to Me

Somehow, this evening, I got to thinking about things I always thought would never happen to me.  Why I thought I was immune to these things I’ll never know.  Maybe it’s just the teenage or 20-something way.

First there’s the obvious one: breast cancer at 28.  Breast cancer at all, really.  Or even cancer at all.  But it happened, and it happened at 28.  No need to rehash that again, I just did it yesterday.

Other things:

The freshman 15

Ok, so it wasn’t 15 and it wasn’t (all) freshman.  You see, freshman year I was an athlete.  I put on some weight, couldn’t tell you how much.  But some of it was muscle – never lifted so much in my life – and some of it was fat.  You’re telling me 2 egg salad sandwiches for lunch on a daily basis isn’t healthy?  Who knew?  Even so, over the course of College: The Bachelor(of science) Years got me a good 30 lb weight gain.

So I guess then that’s true.  I didn’t get the freshman 15.  I got the college 30.  W00t!

Thankfully I also managed to lose it…but not til 2007, 4 years after graduating from college.

The chemotherapy 10 (+)

Sticking with the weight gain theme.  Before I started chemotherapy I read so many places that women tend to gain weight during chemotherapy for breast cancer.  Not just gain weight, but gain fat and lose muscle mass.  Not good!  But not me, right?  I’m an athlete.  I mean forget that getting cancer at all spun that theory right upside down, whatever.  I’m an athlete, I exercise, I’ll maintain my weight and my muscle mass just fine, thank you.

Yeah.  Ok.  Want to know what my upper arms look like right now?

Bingo wings!

Ok, so it isn’t that bad, but they’re flabby!  Flabby, I tell you.  Not like they were post-college-30 (thankfully I did lose that) but flabby all the same.

After my first adriamycin/cytoxan infusion I lost 4 pounds.  Down to 131 lbs (at 5’10″) I told myself that I’d be happy to stay between 130 and 140.  Well I did it – barely.

Grey hair

Yep, got that.  My mom started going grey in her late 20′s.  That will never happen to me! I thought.  Once again, wrong.  I swear to you, my post-chemo salt and pepper hair is much saltier than my pre-chemo hair.  And that leads me to the other thing…

Coloring my hair!

Yes, ladies and gents.  I always said that when my hair did go grey I would gracefully accept it and never try to hide it, never try to be anyone but myself.  Well you know what I decided?  I can be myself with red hair just as well as I can with salt and pepper hair.  So…as soon as I have enough to make it worth the $10…

Wow.  You know what’s really sad? I just went to the Loreal website to find a picture of the hair color I’ve used in the past and found out they’re discontinuing it!  Noooo!  Now I’ll have to find a new one…sigh…

Anyway, do you know what I’ve found through all of these things that would never happen to me?  I’m still me.  And these things are all manageable, though some more easily than others (hello box of hair color!).

Today I went to a new (to me) exercise class.  The social worker at my cancer center told me about it back in June or July, when I was recovering from surgery and hadn’t yet started chemo.  At the time I decided not to go.  The athlete in me was “better” than that class.  After all – the women were all likely to be (much) older than me, less fit than me, and in different places in life.  All of that is true.  Now, however, I’m ashamed to have ever let those thoughts tell me that it wasn’t the right class for me.  I attended a healthy lifestyles education session on Saturday morning, and the woman who leads this exercise program came and gave a short talk.  She was absolutely hilarious and made it sound like such a great time, so I decided I’d try it this week.  So worth it.  The ladies there were so welcoming to me, though I did have one awkward moment when one woman asked why I was there.  (Um…because I had cancer?)  Everyone laughed through the whole class and I was able to modify the exercises to make them a little bit more difficult.  I left the class feeling energized and in a great mood – perfect.

So in all of these things that would never happen to me…maybe there’s some good to be found.