The Physical Transformation

There has been an aspect of this cancer journey that I haven't really touched on, but it's probably the aspect that I have struggled with the most. That aspect is the physical transformation that I've gone through over the last year. Let's get to it...

For the vast majority of my life, I have been what I would consider a "scrawny" individual. Despite being scrawny, I've generally been a fit individual. I played soccer my whole life and ran track my senior year. My best mile time was 5:15. I know that's not amazing, but it's pretty good and I think it demonstrates that I've been in good shape. However, my body weight has always been around 130 lbs. On a 5'11" individual that means rather lean! haha There have been a handful of times throughout my life when I tried building muscle. I'd do push ups and pull ups and all that jazz and just could never really seem to make any changes. I eventually accepted what I believed to be the undeniable truth...I was destined to be scrawny.

Well... After meeting and marrying Kim, healthy eating and exercising became a more prominent part of my life. But for the first long while, nothing changed with my body. Then, in May 2017, I decided to really put in some effort. I decided to do P90X3 and changed my diet to a 3,000 calorie diet in the hopes of putting on weight and building muscle. Over the course of the ensuing year, I completed P90X3 twice, P90X2 once, part of P90X, and Body Beast once. My weight increased from 128 lbs to 175 lbs. I went from struggling through a handful of pull ups in a workout to being able to do 100+ in a half an hour timespan. Needless to say, I finally saw the physical changes I'd always been wanting. Here is a picture of what I looked like partway through that transformation...


In June 2018, it had been over a year since I'd started working out and I felt great. We needed to re-roof our home, so we did. Instead of paying someone to do it, we did it ourselves. Over the course of a week and a half, I was up at 5:30 in the morning and spent hours on the roof morning and evening getting it done. All in all it was a successful project. But then something happened... For two months after completing the roof I had no energy. I was napping all day, every day and had no energy or motivation to workout. When I eventually got over this little phase, I tried jumping back into working out. Where I used to be able to bust out 10 pulls up in a row without issue, I was now struggling to do just one. For some reason, my energy was gone and I struggled with major fatigue. Looking back, I now believe my body was doing all it could to fight the cancer and that's why I felt the way I did. I'll never know, but that's my feeling...

Eventually, my cancer diagnosis came. As we did our due diligence in researching treatments and deciding on a plan of attack, we heard a lot of the same thing... Minimize exercise! In the alternative treatment world, everyone preaches little to no exercise. This allows the body to focus on healing. So, that's what I did. I stopped working out and exercising so that my body could focus on healing. For the first several months, things were pretty good. My energy was pretty good and life went on pretty much as normal. 

In January of this year, I had my brain surgery. Following my brain surgery was the lowest moment of this journey and maybe one of the hardest moments in my life. I was so weak that I couldn't shower myself. I needed to sit in a chair in the shower while Kim cleaned me off. I vividly remember after one of the showers trying to stand up. I felt so frail and so weak that I needed Kim to help me stand up and get out of the shower. Here I'd been, just 7 months ago in the best shape of my life...in a place I'd worked so hard for and wanted for so long...to this moment in the shower when I was as weak and as frail as I'd ever been. I broke down and sobbed. It was a demoralizing moment for me. It was an indication of just how much my body had changed and how much my strength had deteriorated over the course of my cancer journey. 

While my strength eventually improved, it was always a shadow of what it had been. Medications made me fatigued. I spent a lot of time in bed sleeping. Exerting myself in any real manner exhausted me quickly. Walking around the block was tiring. Emotionally and mentally, my physical journey has been the hardest part of this whole experience. I have expressed this to Kim on several occasions, but have never really discussed it other than that.

So what's gone on lately?

Over the last several months, I've slowly put on weight. Immunotherapy drugs can have that side effect. The steroid that I've been on can lead to swelling as a side effect. While my diet has been pretty good for the most part, I've had periods where it wasn't the greatest. I ate far more than I should have in Boston (but I don't regret that! haha). All in all, my body has gotten bigger in a way that I don't like and I've struggled with that. I don't like looking at myself in the mirror. I almost couldn't get my church pants on this last Sunday. I'm just in a place physically that I don't like. Here is what I currently look like... You can see how much I've changed from the pictures above...




My goal? Change all of that. When Kim and I were in Boston, we walked a lot. I mean a lot! We probably walked between 40-50 miles over the course of the week. That's probably more than all of the combined walking I'd done over the prior year. Okay... Maybe not quite, but you get what I'm saying. The most walking I'd really done in a given day was a mile and that probably happened only a couple of times. This experience on the trip was a revelation for me. I was stronger than I thought and I had more energy than I realized. I made the decision on that trip that I was going to regain control of my physical body and make the changes that I needed to make.

Yesterday was the first day of P90X3 for me. It was eye opening. I couldn't complete a push up on my knees and I couldn't even begin to do a pull up. Most every exercise was modified because of my lack of strength and my arm. But... I got through it. And I started the journey that I've needed and wanted to start. Today was day two and I am QUITE sore! haha But I look forward to seeing changes in my body and getting stronger. Let's see where this can take me!

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