Exercising after cancer treatment
Being diagnosed with cancer today is not necessarily a death sentence, but it is certainly life changing. The medications and treatment protocols that will be injected into your body along with biopsies, operations, and complications affect your body’s ability to muster the energy it once had to comply with a strict exercise routine program.
Some people go through several months of staging and classification based on the type of cancer and its actual diagnosis. You can imagine it to be a considerable disruption to any normality that their lives may have resembled the previous diagnosis. Then come the treatment options, the way forward, financial considerations, and some family planning. Obviously, fitting into exercise, meditation, or walking seems like a luxury during these times, but you need to adapt with the same urgency as your treatment protocols when possible to build strength and relieve stress.
Once chemotherapy comes into play and hospitalizations often become necessary, exercise usually takes a back seat. Unfortunately, most hospitals do not have a system to integrate exercise into treatment protocols for these patients. Even the most disadvantaged patients can benefit from gentle exercise, i.e. walks, relaxation techniques, restorative yoga, chair exercises, light weight lifting, or some form of cardiovascular activity to help reduce fluid retention and muscle atrophy.
After stepping through the revolving door of multiple hospitalizations, the weakness in the body is immense, not to mention that many of these patients are sent home with aftercare and are still really sick and unable to fend for themselves. Medical visits continue for many months, if not years. For many patients, blood-building injections like Neupogen and Epogen are common and painful. Regular blood level checks called CBCs are done to check the status of the white and red blood cells along with other important cells that are informative to the hematologist who monitors the prognosis of cancer patients.
So when, how and what kind of exercise does one do? There are exercise classes for cancer popping up all over the place. Yoga classes for cancer survivors, swimming classes, movement classes, but what about a mind and body class that can address emotional turmoil along with rebuilding the body at the same time? Strengthen the mind and the body will follow!
A whole new level of fitness practitioner needs to be created for cancer survivors facing the aftermath of lymphedema side effects after lymph nodes have been removed for blood problems such as neutropenia or anemia, Epstein Barr, chronic fatigue, or including recurrent meningitis or Stories or encephalitis from insulted immune systems.
These professionals will face more and more people with medical problems who really need knowledgeable guides to help facilitate their journey back to wellness.