Autism, Sensory Processing, And Cancer Symptoms:
Why I knew I had cancer and what you should know too.
On October 2nd 2020, I woke up from anesthesia to hear these words. “I’m 90% sure the mass is cancerous.”
This is after I went to see my doctor a week earlier and requested a colonoscopy. Eventually, I would have to do more extensive testing like CT scans, MRI’s and another colonoscopy to get a more conclusive sample of tissue that actually contained cancer. (The first colonoscopy only captured precancerous samples).
When I heard those words I knew my surgeon was right. I felt it in my gut. I had spent most of 2020 on edge. Not only was I contending with Covid like everyone else in the world, but I was also in contention with a premonition.
You see I KNEW something big was coming. Something life changing and possibly life-threatening. I have a sixth sense that way. It’s hard to explain but it’s true. I can feel it and it’s not just in my head, my entire body sends me signals of danger, sometimes months before things happen.
Is it some supernatural intervention? Perhaps, but I also attribute some of my extreme sensitivity to attributes closely related to my autism. Let me explain.
I have sensory processing challenges. This means that I see, hear, taste, and sometimes touch the world in ways that others don’t. My brain doesn’t regulate and filter out unnecessary sights, sounds, and smells. If I could quantify it I would say my senses are 100 times more receptive than most people.
Often times this can be problematic, but this post isn’t about the problems with sensory processing it’s about the way it informs my body about things in real-time and in future time.
Because I am so sensitive to the things around me my body is also super sensitive to the things inside me. I don’t get sick often because I have a super immune system. I’ve never had chickenpox as a kid even though I was constantly exposed. My doctor once told me that I most likely did get the virus but my immune system eradicated it before I experienced systems. This tracks.
My point is that sensory processing issues also mean that my body is just as sensitive to foreign invaders as my brain is to sensory input. A few years ago I literally felt a virus coming on days before any symptoms. I felt it invading my body.
I went to the clinic with no fever, aches, chills, or any other signs of flu and tested negative. I told them to run the test again. After taking 20 minutes of more questions they retested me and it showed positive for Flu A. But barely. The nurse practitioner said that it seemed that it was just starting to show enough to yield a positive result. I knew I had a virus because I could feel it, even without the symptoms showing up yet.
There’s a not so known branch of science that studies something called body mapping. I’m still doing my research so I’m not an expert, but what I have found is that as early as infants we began to flail our arms and legs around as a means of the brain starting to develop an understanding of where our bodies began and end. It’s also why you will see young babies start to notice when a foreign object is placed on them such as a sticker on the forehead or a hat and gloves. Their first instinct is to take it off, recognizing that the object is not part of their body.
This scientific study has been aiding with research for disabled persons who have lost limbs. I haven’t lost a limb, but as I have battling cancer for 4 years things like severe neuropathy in my feet and the eventually need to have a permanent colostomy have changed the way my body works and I can identify with some of the issues related to limb loss shared in this study.
Anyway, the study is helping to explain phenomena like phantom pain and how the body adjusts to the placement of artificial limbs, and other significant changes in the body following surgeries.It’s fascinating stuff really, but I’m a nerd so I’m easily impressed too, but I digress.
I bring the issue of body mapping to the conversation because I believe that my sensory sensitivity causes a form of internal body mapping that allows me the ability to feel foreign invaders inside my body. Sort of like the babies that don’t want to wear gloves or a hat. They know those things don’t belong to their body. In a similar way, I can feel things that don’t belong, sometimes well before they can even be detected.
I believe that’s because my body is in constant conversation with me about what’s inside of it because quite frankly it’s extremely sensitive to sensory input and new sensory changes internally as much as it is sensitive to sensory perception externally.
Prior to my first cancer diagnosis in 2020 I had just had my annual physical with a complete workup. I was given a clean bill of health. Just a few weeks later I began to have cancer symptoms, the primary one being blood in my stool but if I were honest, I think my body was having a conversation with me before the external symptoms.
Ok so what I’m about to say maybe TMI for some so feel free to drop out now.
If you’re still here then you’re doing so at your own risk.
A few weeks prior to noticing blood in my stool I noticed that my body chemistry was changing. How?
I have a unique sense of smell due to my sensory processing issues. What that means is that I can often smell things others can’t. Similar to how blind people can pick up on the fragrances of the people they are around, or how dogs have been known to be able to detect cancer in humans by their incredible sense of smell, I can too, of course my sense of smell is nothing like a dog’s sense of smell, but you understand the analogy.
It’s weird I know. But it’s true. My sensory sensitivity can differentiate between orders. I actually also know people’s “scent.” Every human has a unique scent, and I can smell it, including my own.
That means that I also know my scent when I sweat, or in my own tears, or even in my hair when it’s cut, and most certainly when I have a bowel movement and long before the blood showed up, my body chemistry changed because my body was telling me that we have a foreign invader. I could actually smell the difference.
This post isn’t solely about me so let me get to the point. Here’s the moral of the story. We all map our bodies at a young age. Our brains and bodies draw boundaries to protect us from foreign invaders both externally and internally. For me, autism has afforded me with the ability to be ultra-sensitive to when those boundaries are crossed but you don’t have to be autistic to be in conversation with what your body is telling you.
Be kind to your body by paying attention to the boundaries it has developed because believe me it will tell you when something is wrong by the way your gut feels, or the pain you feel, or the headaches you’ve been having, or the way your body chemistry is changing.
Take notes. Journal about changes. Establish patterns and norms. Know your body and how it works and how it’s supposed to work and don’t get used to feeling bad. I’ll say that again.
Don’t get used to feeling bad. If your stomach hurts. Pay attention.
If your muscles ache. Pay attention
If your head has been hurting a lot. Pain attention.
If you have cough that won’t go away. Go to the doctor.
Your body may be talking to you and although it may seem trivial or unimportant at the time, your body’s sensitivity to things that don’t belong in it or around it is actually a gift from God.
Listen to it. It just may save your life.
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Thinking abt you after reading this, I found numerous letters from kp about getting that test in my wife’s stuff, unopened… so glad you’re aware like this… be strong Lamar you got this !