What it’s like being a fat cancer survivor

When I was going through chemo I would wake up every morning and for a moment I’d

Me being fat with my dog, Koki

forget what was going on. Then it would hit me and I’d think “fuck! I’ve got cancer”.

Facing your mortality at 37 is a terrifying experience. No matter how positive you are or how many times your oncologist tells you you’re having the best treatment they can give you, there’s always an underlying feeling that you’re going to die.

I haven’t had this feeling in a long time, even with the pandemic and general dumpster fire that’s going on I thought I’d made progress with my fear of recurrence.

Fatness and cancer

Until I saw a news headline. “New research into how fat links to breast cancer!” I read the article and all I remembered was “fat people have worse outcomes with cancer treatment”. My chest started to feel tight, the doom came back. I lay in bed in the dark and panicked. My oncologist never said to me “because you’re fat your treatment is not likely to be as effective”. The fear was so intense I almost wrote an email to demand to know if this was true. I woke the next morning thinking “fuck! I’m going to die”.

When you’re fat cancer is your fault and when you’re normal-sized it’s an unfortunate tragedy. I have been a bigger person my entire adult life. My weight cycling started as a teen, over the last two decades I’ve lost and put on the same 20-30kgs. In 2018 when I was diagnosed with her2 positive breast cancer I had put on 15kg in the space of 4-6mths. I was stressed, barely slept, and showed all the classic signs of burnout.

And then I got cancer. Aggressive, high-risk, fast-growing breast cancer. Three plum-sized tumors in my right breast and three lymph nodes infected with the disease. As my oncologist said, “it wasn’t good”.

Me being fat at home.

Weight shame and cancer treatment

On the day of my mastectomy, the nurse weighed me before surgery and the number on the scale was higher than it had been in a long time. Shame washed over me as I looked at the three digits staring back at me. The first thought in my head after waking from having my breast removed was ‘'fuck I'm fat". I had just had my right breast and many lymph nodes removed and my brain went straight to the number I had seen on the scale.

Weight stigma is insidious, my own shame around my body amplified when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It had to be my fault, right? I hadn’t managed to keep the weight off after all and listed among the many risk factors is ‘obesity’.

But what if it wasn’t the obesity, rather the weight cycling that had caused my cancer?

Obesity isn’t a simple condition. Anyone who has been in a larger body will understand the complexity of weight loss. The statistics around successful weight loss suggest five percent of people who diet and lose weight keep it off for more than five years. Yet the diet industry continues to make billions of dollars a year because being fat is seen as a failing.

Is it really the fat?

My inquisitive brain kicked in the morning after reading the latest fat/ cancer link headline. We know weight stigma is pervasive in medicine, if being fat is a risk factor for cancer why do non-fat people get cancer? And if studies are only looking at obesity in isolation how do we know being poor, not having access to affordable nutritious food, weight cycling, or weight stigma aren’t the culprits causing cancer?

Weight stigma means people who are fat/ obese/ overweight avoid seeing their doctor, aren’t treated the same as normal-sized people, and have symptoms that are blamed on their size. I avoid seeing my GP because every time I go she pulls the scales out. I never thought this was abnormal until I started asking normal-sized friends how often their GPs weigh them.

Through a lens of weight stigma

Last week I had an email conversation with fativist and academic Dr Cat Pause to try and find out if there was any research on fat stigma and cancer care. Cat was a guest on my podcast in the first year and I’ve taken part in her research on fat stigma in medicine. Cat passed away in her sleep a few days ago. I was shocked to learn this, when we emailed she said she was in good health.

Cat’s advice to me for looking into cancer care and fatness was to read everything through the lens of weight stigma.

This is my call to action:

If you have experienced fatphobia/ weight stigma during your cancer treatment,

If you are an oncologist or work in cancer care and you’re willing to talk about fatness and cancer,

If you’ve carried out research about weight stigma and cancer care,

I want to hear from you. I will be doing a series for my podcast about being fat and having cancer.

This is for Cat, who after all the amazing work she did around fat stigma was subject to awful trolling after her death. And seriously, fuck that.

How to contact me:

Email thecwordradio@gmail.com

Me saying fuck weight stigma, lets do something positive for Cat.