I’m the scarecrow-skinny kid facing the camera and trying to block the shot in this barefoot shirts-vs-skins basketball game in our rickety old University High School gym. I remember it was a cold, concrete floor, and the area was quite a bit smaller than a regulation basketball court. The photo was taken was sometime during the 1960-1961 school year, and appeared in the school annual, Uniki, in the Spring of 1961.

It may have been the last time in my life I weighed less than I do right now.

Being an active, energetic but skinny kid felt very different than I feel today as a skinny 79-year old cancer patient running on empty much of the time.

Glimpses of myself in the mirror these days are unsettling. Gaunt is the word that comes first to mind. A friend in my weekly “Poi Posse” shopping group, friends who make sure I’ve got enough poi, recently suggested cadaverous. From my own perspective, neither is an exaggeration.

This weight loss wasn’t intentional. There was no new diet, no exercise program, no health milestone I was trying to reach.

The cause is simple. The Big C.

Cancer.

Since the end of February, when I felt something amiss and dragged myself to our local urgent care, I’ve lost more than 15 percemt of my body weight. In any other circumstances, I would have been glad to drop the first 15 pounds of excess weight. Friends even commented that I was “looking good.”

But as the involuntary weight loss continued, it quickly became disorienting and difficult to deal with. Now it is something I live with every single day.

Metabolism Hijacked

I’ve had very little appetite for months. Food just didn’t sound good, or I felt “full” before I even started eating. I thought the weight loss was simply due to not eating enough to sustain myself. You feel crappy, you lose your appetite, you skip meals, and the pounds come off. Simple, right?

The reality is much more complex.

Doctors call it cancer cachexia. I think of it as my metabolism being hijacked. My body isn’t simply burning stored fat because I’m eating less. Instead, it’s consuming muscle and fat at the same time, regardless of how hard I try to keep up with the calories.

Another factor is something called dysgeusia, a persistent distortion in how I experience the taste of different foods.

Things I’ve enjoyed all my life suddenly taste wrong. Many people describe it as metallic, flat, or bitter. I just know that food tastes “off,” and the actual tastes clash with my memory of how I expect them to taste. I try to push myself to eat another bite, slowly, one mouthful at a time.

As a result, meals have become something to endure rather than enjoy. I spend far too much time imagining what would taste good, only to be disappointed when it appears on my plate and food memories collide with my current reality.

This means I can eat what feels like small but reasonably decent meals and the scale still moves in the wrong direction. It feels like trying to climb uphill while the ground keeps sliding backward beneath my feet.

My clothes no longer fit, which has become more than an inconvenience. To keep my pants from falling to my knees, I recently had to buy a new belt that tightens several inches beyond my old one. Now I’m shopping for shirts and pants at least one size smaller than the XL I’ve worn for years.

The new clothes won’t hide the weight loss, but at least they won’t make it look more glaringly obvious.

And, of course, the physical changes make looking into the mirror a surreal experience.

The mirror reminds me every day that cancer isn’t just something that shows up in scans or blood tests. It’s visible in the face looking back at me, in clothes that no longer fit, and in the number on the digital scale waiting, almost judgmentally, on the floor in our spare bedroom.

Sometimes I look at that old basketball photograph and it hits me that the skinny kid in the gym and I now weigh about the same. That’s where the similarity ends. He had a body that could run all afternoon, or spend a day body surfing, without giving it a second thought. I now measures each day’s ambitions against how much energy happens to be left in the tank.

The challenge now isn’t getting back to my old weight. It’s holding on to as much strength as I can while the chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments do their work.

Some days that means another stroll down the street, or a little farther to the beach park on the other side of Kahala Avenue, or perhaps just dragging a hose out into the yard to rescue plants drying out in the summer heat.

Some days it means convincing myself to eat one more bite, and then another.

Some days, just making it through the day is enough.