50's sickly appearance for his next role as a cancer patient
Looking at pictures of 50 Cent’s dramatic weight loss takes me back to 2008, the year I had my surgery and started chemo. It sure wasn’t pretty, but more on that in a moment.
50 dropped 60 pounds — reportedly by adopting a liquid diet and walking on a treadmill for three hours a day — for his latest role as a football player who becomes a cancer patient.
His photos are shocking. His face is gaunt, and his eyes seem disturbingly empty. It got me wondering if that’s what folks thought about me when I dropped 30 pounds at the start of my cancer experience.
I only have a few pictures of myself at 120 pounds, and I can’t look at
them without cringing. My collarbone is protruding, and my eyes look sunken in. I underwent rapid weight loss, which, as you can tell from the photo, is pretty unforgiving.
When I smiled, I felt really self-conscious about showing my teeth because my pearly whites turned dull, and I looked like I was a few vitamins short of dysentery. Perhaps worst of all, though, I lost my hips and thighs, which, for a black woman, is the equivalent of losing your most prized assets.
I cried when I couldn’t fill out a pair of size 4 jeans. I remember being around my girls, who are all nice and thick, and thinking about how unattractive I looked. When surrounded by their voluptuous bodies, I felt like Star Jones. And that gave me a whole new appreciation for curves and a little body fat.
It took me about a year before I began to feel and look like my normal self. When I ditched my first round of chemo cocktails for Avastin, the drug I’m on now, I no longer had a constant medicine taste in my mouth. And when my appetite returned, I decided to eat whatever I wanted, and it worked.
I started busting out my cancer clothes with the quickness, and I said many Hail Mary’s when my butt returned. When some random dude on the street complimented me on my curvaceousness, I got really excited. He had no idea how much he’d made my day. I felt like I was back after a very unattractive 12 months.
So, I write all this in the hope that 50′s new movie, which I’m going to see even though I heard it’s “good and terrible,” shows him rebound from his sickly appearance. Clearly, my own metamorphosis from Skeletor to thick girl is proof that it’s possible to bounce back from cancer-causing weight loss.
In fact, when I go to the hospital for treatment, I see very few cancer patients who look like cancer patients. You’d never even know that most of them were on chemo. That makes me thankful to live in the time of modern medicine, which is probably really rudimentary in the grand scheme of it all. Nevertheless, we’ve come a long way from the images of that frail, near-death dude in the Julia Roberts’ movie Dying Young.
Recently, one of the nurses in the chemo unit told me that I was pretty healthy. You know, uhm, cancer aside. It sounds like an oxymoron, but luckily in the 21st century, it doesn’t have to be.
I hope 50′s new flick represents us right.
I love you and you’re beautiful, now and back when u had lost all the weight. So glad that I get the privilege to be inspired by you and pass on everything I learn from you to those in need. Thanks for this post.
Great post. We can always appreciate where we are by looking back at where we were. Now how thick was that back side again? LOL
Thanks for sharing. I had mixed thoughts about commenting on Fifty’s current appearance and wondered how cancer really does affect the psyche of survivors when it comes to the physical attributes, or lack there of, that the condition impacts. Chana, you’re beautiful!
Like Zerline, I too had reservations about commenting on 50′s weight loss but for all types of reasons, as I’m prone to stick my foot in my mouth. Your commentary was insightful and as always phrased and worded so eloquently. See you at BWB in a few weeks. We need to catch up.
Great article!