Month: September 2022

Maybe Being Stinky Is Not So Bad?

From what I can tell, the loss of body odor following cancer chemotherapy isn’t widely acknowledged within the medical community, but it’s certainly something that many of us have experienced.

This is NOT what you think of when someone says, “sweaty armpit”!

Based on what I’ve read, this might be a result of the weedwhacking effect that chemo drugs have on our microbiomes. Regardless, the result has been positive for those of us who find that we don’t have to worry about being smelly.

However, I happened to catch an interview on National Public Radio (aka NPR) that helped make more sense of what was actually going on, even though it was a bit of a killjoy. Listen to it here, where you can also find a full write-up of the piece.

Basically, that sweaty stink that we find repugnant is from a compound produced by bacteria living on the skin. One species of these bacteria that’s associated with an onion-like odor is Staphylococcus hominis.

Our stinky sweat may offer some protection from stuff like MRSA, shown on this CDC photo. They might look like cute fuzzy purple balls, but in the age of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, they’re potential killers.

And unfortunately, these smelly microbes are very beneficial, helping protect humans from things like eczema and MRSA (antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). As one of the researchers puts it, sweat is an “antibiotic juice” that forms a protective layer on our skin as it dries.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: cancer is miserable enough, and you HAD to take away this one little thing (loss of body odor) that was the only perk to chemo?

Well, as mentioned above, I’m not qualified to definitively say that it’s the chemo that kills the skin microbes and makes you not smell. I’ve been unable to find research studies that examine the effects of chemotherapy on your skin’s microscopic residents. Nonetheless, I’ve tried to contact the researchers mentioned in the NPR story to see if they’ve had any experience with chemotherapy and loss of body odor in cancer patients. If they reply, I’ll report back to you.

For now, if you’re happy being odorless, keep enjoying it.

Weighing on My Mind: Not the Scale Again!

Anyone who’s been through cancer knows that the experience is not just about the cancer. The entire journey involves much more, revealing even the little anxieties that had been tucked away in dark corners.

One of those for me was that I was constantly put on scales. EVERY single doctor’s visit, I was weighed. And I hated it.

It’s worth mentioning that I don’t have what most people refer to as a “weight problem”. Unless, that is, you mean being exceptionally diligent that I not put on weight. For me, weight was tied to self-worth, and in my perfectionist view, I was driven by fear of shame to keep my weight down.

At every single (frequent!) oncologist visit: “Step on the scale and I’ll get your weight.”

Ironically, the positive side effect of this was that I became very interested in exercise and healthy eating, and that has served me well. But of course, it took a long while for all of this to shake out into a truly healthy mentality, and particularly in my teens and early 20s, my mindset was not the healthiest.

By my 50s, however, I had a great relationship with my active, healthy lifestyle.

And then I got cancer.

And all of a sudden, hospital scales were all over the place, and even not being overweight, I sweated the weigh-ins. I sweated them when I first went to see my doc about the lump, when my weight started plummeting even before my first chemo infusion (hello, uncontrolled anxiety) and when post-infusion I was retaining water and my weight crept up.

I could write an entire post (or several!) about how, while I religiously weighed myself twice a week at home, I had intentionally put off several doctor’s visits over the years NOT because I was 10-20 pounds over a reasonably healthy weight…but because I was about three pounds higher than I felt I should be. Those three or four pounds would have disappeared on my 5’11” athletic frame, but that was beside the point.

There was an “acceptable” number and I wanted to make sure I was there before heading to the doctor.

The number of cancer visit weigh-ins was staggering. Every.single.time I saw the doctor (which was a lot), I had to hop on the scale. I would purposefully not drink very much water or eat less beforehand. It DID NOT EVEN MATTER that we were dealing with a life threatening illness. I absolutely hated getting weighed in a doctor’s office and I hated what the scale meant to me – that I was somehow never good enough.

Since adopting a spirit of mindfulness, my perfectionism has softened and I no longer abhore the weigh-ins like I used to.

I had internalized that belief.

Gradually, the number of weigh-ins decreased. It was as if a pot that was at full boil slowly simmered down. My mindfulness practice showed me not only that anxiety was not a helpful reaction to a stressful situation, but that the slight weight fluctuations that I obsessed about weren’t apparent to anyone else. Nonetheless, I had taken them to be indicative of yet another way that I felt I had fallen short of the person I “should have” been.

And that helped me understand and begin to deal with those unreasonable and even meaningless expectations I had of myself that were still lurking in the shadows.

So now, when it’s time to go to the doctor, do I fret the scale?

Well, I still feel that twinge because it’s a deeply-ingrained habit, but now I understand where that twinge comes from. And once I get off the scale, I forget about it and go on with my day.

Calming the Mind by Counting to 10 – with a Focus Twist

I’ve posted several times about different counting techniques that I’ve used to help calm and ground myself (counting backwards, counting 100 breaths). It sounds like such a simple thing, but it is surprisingly effective.

Counting is one of those things that we naturally learn when we are very young, and because it’s so familiar to us, we can do it with ease as adults.

Job #1 is to stop the swirling thoughts so that you can drop back to sleep.

This ease comes in handy when our Monkey Mind is jumping around like mad, stewing over what has happened or fearing for what is to come. Counting gives it something to do so that its attention is drawn away from anxious thoughts.

In particular, I’ve found this to be useful at night when falling back to sleep has been hindered by that incessant buzz of thinking that won’t go away.

The technique that I’ve used over the last few weeks weaves a counting pattern like this:

Become aware of your body lying in bed. Try to soften the most obvious places of tension (for me, neck and shoulders) and turn your attention to your breath.

Begin by focusing on your inhales of your breaths and counting them, up to ten. Then, switch your focus to your exhales, counting each one up to ten. And again, switch back to focusing on the inhales, continuing this way

The combination of counting up to ten and focusing on either the inhales or exhales provides enough of a distraction from your thoughts, but requires some gentle attention to keep on track. The switching of focus invites your mind to return to the breath.

Counting sheep might work just fine, but counting breaths helps you stay present and grounded.

I’ve found ten to be a very good number; however, five would also work. Whatever you prefer. This might require experimentation to see what is best for you. For example, counting to two might work better for some people during waking hours when there is naturally more stimulation around.

As you establish a pattern with your breath, extend your exhales regardless of where your focus is. This helps slow both your breath and heartrate.

Again, this technique works because counting to ten is simple and unstimulating, allowing the mind to lull itself into a calmer state. When I find myself missing ten and instead counting into the teens without switching my inhale-exhale focus, I know that I’m beginning to drift off. I gently stay with it, but sleep is nearby.

Another Oncology Appointment…and What’s Up With That Smell?

My oncologist appointment last week marked five years since completing my final chemo infusion (and for those of you keeping track, since I had that nasty chemo nail infection).

Lately, my oncological appointments run like this: my onc asks how things are going, I air all my grievances and we spend the rest of the visit agreeing that there’s no way to determine whether what I’m experiencing is chemo-related, menopause-related, or something that I was dealing with before but hadn’t paid attention to back before cancer.

Because there’s nothing like cancer to make you acutely aware of every twinge and creak in your body.

But that’s about it. We are running out of things to talk about. In this context that’s a good thing.

I used to lament “what could have been” had I not gotten cancer, not experienced chemo, not been pushed into menopause chemically and artificially had my estrogen levels squashed. But now, I know better. What happened, happened. And “what could have been” is pointless to ponder because it simply isn’t reality.

It took me a while to get to that place and I’m finally okay with it .

But there was something else different about this oncology visit…

I walked into the cancer center for my appointment and was hit with “the smell”. There is a distinct scent in the building, possibly the cleaning solutions used to disinfect the place or maybe a fragrance that is purposefully pumped in. I had mentioned it to my clinical counselor several years ago and she admitted that a number of people have said the same thing. The smell is familiar, given that after multiple appointments and infusions and radiation sessions, I’ve experienced it a lot and have made many associations with it.

But for some reason, this time it hit me hard and a wave of sensations washed over me. Not sure why my reaction was so strong, but I’d like to think that between my last onc appointment and this one, I’ve made the most progress in distancing myself from the frustrations of getting cancer and have actually moved on with my life.

However, that rush of emotions served as a reminder of everything that I’ve been through over these past five years. I thought that chemo was going to be the hard part. Turns out, it was the most predictable part: six trying infusions, but they came with an end date. The rest of treatment brought uncertainty and unexpected difficulties. I thought I was done after radiation…but the pills continued.

Looking back at this, while I’m technically not “out of the woods” and may never be, these last six months have felt different. Yes, I still have another onc appointment half a year from now, but I’m finally turning my face forward to the future instead of constantly looking back at the past, worried that those frights will catch me again.