Lessons Learned from Hank

I had someone ask me today if I'd be willing to talk to a woman who is basically in the same situation I was in last April - uterine cancer, high enough BMI that surgery is not an option, panicked out of my freaking mind, etc... of course I said yes, but it got me to thinking.  If I could give advice to my old self, what would I tell her?  What have I learned?

1.  (Most important) You can do this.  I know, you've tried dieting before, it's never really worked, you know it's not going to happen.  But you've never had this kind of motivation before.  It's not going to be easy - ignore all that nonsense that ads peddle about it being simple and pain free and breezy.  Hell, ignore any non-health professional with a BMI of less than 40 - their bodies do not work the same as yours does.  They don't gain weight on a diet of less than 1200 calories a day.  You do.  Live with it, learn to live longer with it, and eat your veggies and suck it up.  You're in this for the long haul.

2.  You're going to be angry.  You're going to be angry at your doctors for saying No, you're going to be angry at yourself, you're going to be angry at your family, you're going to be angry at Sara Lee, for god's sake.  You're going to be angry.  Don't let that anger make you give up.  Use that anger to power you through.  I thought in my heart of hearts that my cancer doctors didn't think I could lose the weight, and that they just told me to do it to make me go away and stop bothering them.  (I was a little bit paranoid at that point.)  Every time I went down another 10 pounds on the scale, I pictured my doctor being shocked.  It was petty, admittedly, but it helped... but remember - what you're really angry at is cancer.  Cancer is a jerk.  Don't let it screw up your relationship with other people

3.  Speaking of your relationships with other people...  get to the Cancer group.  Trust me.  You are going to need them (or someone like them) to get through this.  They know what you're going through, they know what you will go through, they're people you can be honest in front of without feeling like a big, fat idiot.

4.  It's a marathon.  This is going to be long, and hard, and tedious.  But there are mileposts along the way.  Celebrate the milestones.  And just because it's a marathon, doesn't mean you can't do a sprint or two along the way.  I'm going to be sprinting for the next couple of weeks - I want to hit a certain milestone by the time I turn 49 in 3 weeks, but that's a temporary thing.

More to come as I think about it, but that's a start...