Cancer Diary: Yeah, Carl Lost a Lot of Weight, but It Was Nothing to Celebrate

Carl, so proud in his new, smaller, fully fitting Scott vest

 

Indeed, several months before Carl was diagnosed with advanced metastatic cancer (stage 4), he lost quite a bit of weight. Nearly 50 pounds overnight. Now, he was big, very big. Any weight loss, in our thinking at the time, was to be applauded. And so, he ordered s smaller Scott vest and showed off his new slimmer self. (Not slim, mind you, but slimmer -- he was still nearly 300 pounds when he died.) What we did not realize -- and I certainly wish we had is that such a weight loss is not to be celebrated. It is a sign of dying, or at least, of advanced cancer. Instead of showing off his success ("achieved" -- more accurately, "experienced" -- though he was not on a particularly regimented diet), he should have been rushing to his doctor and asking, "What is wrong with this picture?" Perhaps, hopefully, the doctor would have figured out the cancer diagnosis early enough to do something about it, perhaps in time to catch the primary so that treatment could be targeted, rather than oncologists throwing up their hands and scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to handle the very deadly and swiftly advancing Cancer of Unknown Primary.

Unexplained weight loss

Weight loss without effort is never good and never truly unexplainable. There are diseases that will cause weight losses, and doctors know what they are -- and therefore it is important to bring any overnight weight loss to the attention of the primary care physician. Carl did not, and he paid the ultimate price. 

Unexplained weight loss is often associated with cancer. We did not know that. We did not know anything about cancer; while there were many physical issues we have dealt with over the years, none of them were cancer -- until Carl was diagnosed very, very late with it.

Extreme weight loss is also a sign of dying. Knowing the signs of dying can help very much with making the right decisions, such palliative care versus interventive treatment. 

Carl was very obese most of his life. In fact, in spite of the significant weight loss, he was just barely under the maximum weight established by Science Care for whole body donation. Because of the obesity, he had diabetes. Both obesity and diabetes are known precursors to cancer. Still, we did not put two and two together, until four was no longer a possibility.

Hopefully, this post will help others to start thinking along these lines.

Loss of appetite

Carl loved to eat. He actually lived to eat. He adhered to a "seefood" diet: see food, eat food. Had he had a loss of appetite, then there would have been a natural explanation for his weight loss (though not for his appetite loss). Some people do lose their appetites. 

Carl never lost his appetite until two weeks before dying. That is how we knew death was near. The man who had had a love affair with food all his life left meal after meal barely touched. And the last four days of his life, he simply did not eat. Every tray of food was returned untouched.

Blog editor's note: As a memorial to Carl, and simply because it is truly needed, MSI Press is now hosting a web page, Carl's Cancer Compendium, as a one-stop starting point for all things cancer, to make it easier for those with cancer to find answers to questions that can otherwise take hours to track down on the Internet and/or from professionals. The web page is in its infancy but expected to expand into robustness. To that end, it is expanded and updated weekly. As part of this effort, each week, on Monday, this blog will carry an informative, cancer-related story -- and be open to guest posts: Cancer Diary. 

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