The Connection Between Cancer and Leggings

I currently own countless pairs of leggings--more than what should be owned by one person. On the contrary, I only own four pairs of jeans. Four pairs of jeans in which I never wear simply because of the size on the tag and the feeling that I get when I put them on.

Leggings have become my best friend over the past two years since finishing chemotherapy and radiation.

During cancer treatments your body will either love you or hate you. As a cancer patient, you think your body hates you anyway because it's doing everything in its power to work against you and make you more ill than you already are because of the stupid cancer. There are, however, a few lucky patients that actually don't get too ill. I, unfortunately, was not one of those lucky few.

You see cancer stories on YouTube or elsewhere online, or on TV that tell about how so-and-so ran a 5K while getting treatments, or how yoga and eating well can help you during treatments. In my case, I couldn't leave the bed to go to the bathroom without puking my guts up, yet alone make a decent sandwich or something. I was one of the unlucky ones. My body hated me. I became so drugged up and so sick from all the toxins that are chemotherapy going into my system that I could barely keep my eyes open for five minutes in the run of a day. The time I spent getting treatments, I spent high on drugs. I can barely recall things that happened or people who visited me while I was sick. My body was a toxic pit.

During this time, I was either extremely nauseated and leaning over a toilet (while not realizing I would reach back to hold my non-existent hair from falling in the toilet) or eating everything I could get my hands on (when I didn't have my mouth full of sores or yeast infections from the treatments). I was either starving and not able to keep any food down or I was a 600lbs obese man eating everything under the sun. There was no in between.

So what does this have to do with leggings? Well, after treatment my appetite came back. They don't tell you that steroids will make you eat your own body weight in McDonald's, but that's essentially what happened. I ate everything I had missed out on during treatments and I enjoyed every last bit of it until I started looking in the mirror more. You see, when I was going through treatments, I barely looked in the mirror because the person staring back at me, wasn't me. I was bald, skinny, and sickly. I wasn't the healthy person I once was. But when the hair started to grow back, that became a bit easier, and with each inch of hair growth, came three inches on the waistline. Leggings were the one thing that I felt comfortable in and were somewhat socially acceptable to wear as pants so I wasn't constantly wearing sweats everywhere. It didn't matter how many pounds I put on, the leggings would fit regardless...so I threw out all my old clothes and settled for a body I didn't quite ask for. 

Cancer does a lot to a person emotionally and most times body image isn't the first thing we think of. It isn't vain to want to look like you did pre-cancer treatment, it's human. You want to feel like your old self. It's not possible to be who you used to be before cancer (or any traumatic event in your life), but you have to take the healthy steps to becoming a better person in the body and mind you have now.

I'm so excited to get back into jeans and throw out all those leggings some day.