by Laura Strebel

Created on: March 09, 2009   Last Updated: March 16, 2009

I just had a crash diet imposed on me by cancer. I lost 25 lbs in 2 months and at 5'2" tall, I now weigh 105 lbs. I look terrible! My regular clothes just fall off me. If nothing else, I've been told I practice the philosophy of Ghandi but I damn well don't care to look like him, too!

Instead of my thighs comfortably rubbing together as they've done for so many years, now they have to call one another by long distance, I have to stand beside myself to make a shadow next to a broom, my cats try to run to me, miss and have to clean themselves off the wall behind me.

My wonderful husband has watched what cancer and treatments have done to me three times now and this has been the most drastic. But, after a trip to emergency, last Sunday, when even the hospital wasn't sure if I'd come out of it alive because of the nausea and dehydration, I feel as though I have a new lease on life.

For me, this time, it was watermelon that is saving my life. I was at that point, I knew I had to have something that would go down, stay down and allow more food and drinking to be processed. I refused to throw in the towel (I needed the darn thing handy!). Other people tried to help and finally had just resigned themselves to stand-by because nothing had worked.

I told my dear husband that for some reason, I wanted watermelon. He somehow, through three stores, finally found one that had one container of pre-cut watermelon pieces left. He grabbed it, fought a battle to make it to the checkstand and brought it home. That container couldn't have been filled with gold and made me feel good at that point. But as that cool, sweet, wet watermelon slid down my ravaged wreck of a throat that had been so unmercifully burned with vomit just a few hours before, at that moment I was experiencing the very best that any heaven could ever offer me. I'm now expanding my eating selections carefully. I honestly feel I have another handle to pick up my life with.

For me it was watermelon, for someone else in that dire circumstance it might be something else. But keep trying. Don't judge others by what's on the outside no matter what the package "usually" says. Just love what's on the inside and help it flourish. That's where the spark of life is held gently and the packaging does not matter.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> So many battle with "the weight issue". "I'd look better with just that ten pounds gone", or maybe it's 20 pounds or "Man, those pants make

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