Coming to terms with feelings and emotions about weight gain and weight loss is often part of a cancer patient’s experience.
When Laura Walker was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2012, how much she weighed was the furthest thing from her mind. She was more concerned about the side effects of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation. Then, a year after her mastectomy, Walker, a mother of four from West Columbia, Texas, went to see a plastic surgeon at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston to discuss her breast reconstruction. The surgeon didn’t ask Walker to undress or take a look at her scar. “Just looking at me, she knew I was too big,” she says.
It was January 2014. Walker was 41 years old and weighed 328 pounds. Her body mass index (BMI) was 53. She had been overweight for more than a decade. To have surgery, she learned, her BMI would have to be 35 or less. “I didn’t even know what BMI was,” says Walker. “I was just living my life. I was happy. I gave no thought to what I was eating or what I weighed.” That would need to change. Her body was carrying a 100-pound obstacle that stood between her and a new right breast.
Read the rest of the article, which I wrote for the winter 2015/2016 issue of Cancer Today.
Sue Rochman 