I recently saw an article about True Cancer Bodies, a group of cancer patients whose photos proudly display the impacts of cancer on their bodies. The images were raw and powerful – stitches and scars, bald heads and a missing jaw – and I found myself looking deep into the subject’s eyes. I could feel the mixture of pain and power and pride piercing through me as I scrolled through the pictures and read the captions.
I felt drawn to the people in the article; they had endured the cancer journey and all that it does to your life, your person, your soul. Yet I felt a strange disconnect from “my people,” my tribe of cancer survivors. My journey did not come with surgeries or hair-killing chemotherapy. None of my body parts were surgically removed or altered. I have one big scar behind my knee where they removed the first mole and many smaller scars whether other cancerous or precancerous spots have been cut out, but no identity altering disfiguration.
I am a stage four cancer survivor but I could not connect with the survivors in the story, which gave me a feeling that I got away with something. That I’m not a true cancer body because I did not have to endure the ravages of chemo or radiation. I felt guilty, but selfishly lucky and grateful.
Mirrors and stares
Later that day I was walking out of the locker room at the gym and I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and quickly looked away. I put my head down and walked through the rows of exercise machines passing all the spandex-clad tan bodies working out on the ellipticals and the buff weight lifters confidently doing squats or dead lifts. I was hoping no one was looking at me and wished I could become invisible. Why did I wear shorts, and short shorts at that? But I loved this old pair of running shorts and I missed them. I haven’t worn them since I finished treatments over five years ago. I kept my eyes on the ground and briskly walked out into the warm summer air and took a breath, cursing my skin and the stares I knew I was walking through.
And then it hit me. I have my own cancer body. I have all my hair, but it’s streaked with gray and now has dark curls underneath a top layer of brunette locks in the back. From the front I feel 65; from the back I think I could pass for a 30-something. My skin has no pigment. It is a pasty pale white, nearly translucent making my blue veins look like flowing tattoo rivers running down my arms.
Letting go
I’ll never forget the day when I noticed my skin changing. I was lying in the hospital bed and I pulled the sheets back and my legs were lying straight out in front of me, my cranberry cream toenail polish adding a splash of color to the otherwise sterile white room. I noticed a dark splotch around my ankle and down towards my painted toes. Other splotches covered my lower calf. It reminded me of a giraffe’s brown and white coat. My skin did strange things during those weeks in the hospital. It turned red and blotchy, bloated with fluid it turned my ankles and elbows and wrists into mushy blobs. I thought little of the brown spots.
The next day the brown was gone. When the red blotches disappeared and I fully recovered from the six months of treatments, I was left without any pigment in my skin. It was all pale white. Vitiligo is the official term.
Two months later I noticed my hair coming back around my forehead – snow white peach fuzz. I didn’t lose all my hair, but what I did came back white in the front, curly and dark in the back. The rest remained straight and brown. I looked like my beagle with the tri-color combination, but not nearly as cute.
I became overly self-conscious about my looks, sure that everyone was staring at my ghostly white skin. Gone were those fleeting days when I thought I was pretty. Damn, it took me over thirty years to look at myself and smile at the image looking back at me. Now I was back to the angsty teenage me who didn’t want to look at herself and didn’t want anyone looking at her.
A new beauty
Thankfully moments like that at the gym are fleeting. Most days I look at myself and I see me again. The beautiful me with big green eyes and a nice smile; my athletic and lean body no longer sick but strong and capable. I feel better on the inside than I have in a long time. That should be all that matters.
But some days I can’t seem to let go of my old tan self. I still want her back and cannot fully embrace this new look of mine. It’s vain, it’s pathetic and embarrassing to admit my self-consciousness. I am sure people are looking at the few spots of pigment that remain on my knuckles and I always want to blurt out, “I had cancer, I didn’t always look like this.” My young niece recently said she liked my spots – they made me look like a Dalmation puppy! God bless her; who doesn’t love Dalmations?
Melanoma has required me to let go of old identities and dig deeper to find my strength. I am lucky to have my own cancer body. And she is strong and capable and dare I say, beautiful.
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