Performance Review

(or I want my body to stop keeping score)

I never enjoyed writing performance reviews, but I would be lying if I said they did not occasionally impress me. When I looked at what had actually been accomplished, what the team had carried, what had worked and what had not, there were almost always more wins than misses.

Still, because I am human, the misses hurt more. I could stack the wins high, acknowledge them fully, and still find myself stuck on the one thing that had not gone right. Even when it barely counted in the overall tally.

Lately, I have been doing a physical performance review of my last 21 months.

The review includes three biopsies, a Stage IV melanoma diagnosis, a craniotomy, three rounds of combo immunotherapy, kidney stones, uveitis, adrenal insufficiency, thyroid damage, more than 30 scans and MRIs, five new daily medications including a lifelong steroid, perimenopause, a 30-pound weight gain, stopping work, putting my house on the market, selling it, moving 40 miles away from my son, and putting more than 11,000 miles on my car so I could still see him regularly and show up for his baseball games.

In that same stretch, I kept walking nearly every day, returned to the gym, and am now close to finishing the Livestrong program at my local YMCA.

I also started this blog. Created Cancer Sharks. Hosted our first annual live storytelling event. Started to paint. Reached out for professional help every time the darkness began stealing too much light.

And still, the metric that catches in my throat is the weight gain.

That is the truth.

Not the brain surgery. Not the steroid dependence. Not the adrenal insufficiency. Not even the fact that my thyroid is damaged. The weight.

I wish that were not true. I wish surviving all of this had made me more evolved than that. More grateful. More free. I want to take greater pride in being alive, in still finding joy, in still creating, in still showing up for the people and moments that matter.

And yet there is still an asterisk in my mind. Because I got through all of this, but I got through it in a body that gained more weight than it ever has before.

Yes, more than pregnancy.

And if you are wondering whether I tried a GLP-1, I did. It made the darkness more frightening than it had ever been. So I chose physically heavier over emotionally unbearable.

Which means I am back in the same old review cycle: staring at a long list of what was met, survived, endured, and built, and still getting hung up on the one measure that may not be the most important KPI but somehow still drags on every other win.

Maybe that does not mean I am unchanged.

Maybe it just means the body remains one of the hardest places to stop keeping score.