Thank you to David Haas for this post

3 Ways that Physical Fitness Can Support You on Your Cancer Journey

Did you know that one simple change might make a world of difference to a person affected by cancer? Whether you are newly diagnosed, currently in treatment, or in remission, this advice from medical professionals can make a difference: just start moving.

Research has shown that engaging in appropriate levels of exercise can improve a person's overall sense of wellness. A set of guidelines established in 2010 state that even mild to moderate exercise has the power to improve overall functioning, reduce fatigue, and create greater self-esteem for individuals affected by cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Here are three ways that physical activity can make a positive difference for you, whether you are a person living with cancer or a cancer survivor.

1. Improving quality of life

Physical activity can benefit a person's body as well as his or her moods. Movement helps to support the work of all body systems, from circulation to digestion. Walking and other types of exercise result in the production of endorphins and other helpful hormones that have positive effects on a person's emotional state. Also, being physically active sometimes leads to increased engagement with the outside world, such as when a person takes a walk outdoors or gets involved in an exercise class. In this way, increased social interaction can positively impact your mental health.

2. Alleviating fatigue

A pervasive sense of tiredness is one common side effect of radiation and chemotherapy, which are standard protocols in mesothelioma treatment as well as many other types of cancer therapies. It is believed that even a brief period of mild exercise, such as a short non-aerobic walk, has a positive short-term effect on a person's energy level. Physical activity can even cause a long-term decrease in fatigue if a person engages in regular exercise.

3. Increasing self-esteem

For some people, cancer treatment can result in changes to how their bodies look or feel, making them feel less confident about themselves. Being physically active can help to counteract this phenomenon. In many cases, physical fitness leads to a sense of accomplishment and greater physical ease, both of which can translate into self-confidence.

Simply increasing your activity level can make a big difference in your overall functioning and sense of wellness. Ask your doctor or treatment team about safe ways to increase your physical fitness, so that you can give your body and mind the gift of greater wellness.

21. All downhill from here!

Time is not linear: this new year hooks into the new years before it. Luckily, I can only remember last year with clarity, when we woke up to our final day of a skiing holiday in Bulgaria. I had struggled with the skiing, partly due to ineptitude and partly to an unpleasant leg injury (a steam room burn in a country where health and safety standards were still in their infancy).

Going to the slopes on the first lift, when most of the other skiers were recovering from the night before, gave me the space and quiet I needed to master what seemed to come so easily to everyone else. My boys gave me some very basic but effective tutoring, and helped me to see how the fear in my head had stopped my body from being free enough to love the fast thrill of the downhill. With my young experts as excellent teachers, I got the hang of it. “Make like a snake on the downhill slope.” I recited over and over, my new motto, to shut out my boring, repressive brain from saying, “You’ll hurt yourself.”

I finally got it and had to prove it, so time after time I took the lift to the top and made the descent. That sick fear gone, even the more challenging parts of the run were possible. I knew I could trust myself to do anything, if only I could keep my bossy head from interfering. Perhaps because this hadn’t come easily, this old dog struggling to learn a new trick, the thrill of the new skill was exhilarating.

The snow sparkled in the sunlight: pink, golden, happy. The skis at last owned me. I listened to the noise they made on the snow, let my muscles work intuitively with them and relaxed into the sheer playful fun of the moment. It was an epiphany, and a triumph over self-doubt.

A year on, I take this memory as my metaphor. I stand at the summit, see the future spread out small in the valley below. I’m ready to push off and enjoy the challenge of the unknown with a hopeful heart. All I have to do is trust, be intuitive, have faith.

Are you with me now? Are you ready? There is motion beneath our feet. Faster and faster we are flying down the mountain, fearless and joyful. Cherish the moment, feel your heart leap, love the excitement of life as it is happening. Isn’t it wonderful?

20. Goodbye and Welcome

Nearly the end! Today and tomorrow and we’re done.

Three weeks on from the final operation I’m getting back to normal ready for work next week. Routine will return with the daily mile run in the morning and I’ll be able to go swimming; should make the forty lengths again without too much problem. As Spring comes I’ll prepare again, God willing, for the Women’s 10k in May, and like two years ago (when cancer was something that happened to other people) I’ll be asking for sponsorship for a breast cancer charity, this time with the awareness that I had a lucky escape, thanks to all the people who’ve supported such charities before, and all those who dedicate their lives to the cause, rather than the hour I’ll dedicate to the run!

Bodies heal according to plan thanks to the outstanding medical care I’ve received. The invisible healing of the heart and head is greatly accelerated by the love, kindness and understanding of family, friends and strangers and I will remain ever amazed and grateful that these have been so freely and generously given. Thank you!

This has not been a linear narrative starting at the beginning and going logically and chronologically to the end. For me life and time are not linear but like a spiral staircase where we start at the bottom and go upwards. We keep passing above what has gone before, find links and hooks to the past and lay down patterns for the future. We stand at this pivotal point in time when the old and new year will almost pass each other by.

2011 has not been an unwelcome guest for me; she has brought many good gifts, good news as well as bad, but she has been here long enough. Her appointment is over, a new visitor is coming up the road, passing the hedges and just out of sight, waiting discreetly until I have given 2011 her coat, handed her the luggage she must take with her, thanked her for coming and kissed her goodbye. As I watch her shuffle down my path, make a left turn onto the road, I do not close the door, for soon 2012 will take a step forward, come up my path with an open smile on her face and mysterious packages in her arms.

Here she is now. I smile and shout hi, making no attempt to hide my pleasure at her arrival. The door is open wide.

“Come in, my long-awaited friend,” I say, embracing her. “How warm and alive you are! How good it is that you are here at last.”

There are many of you now standing in your porches, on your doorsteps, doing the same. Perhaps in your eagerness to see 2011 go you have had her buttoned up in her coat awhile and are waiting for a taxi to take her away, impatiently looking at your watch, wondering why it is taking so long. Perhaps 2011 has been a very unwelcome presence, squatting in your life and, having long-since served the eviction order, your moment is coming to see her booted out the door. She is going now, no doubt about it. The champagne is chilled, the glasses are ready, not so much to cheer 2011 passing, as to welcome in the unknown guest now standing in your hall.

Although she looks a little dazed by her new surroundings, place the glass in her hand and pour. Toast her presence in your life, this most welcome 2012.

I raise my glass to all of you who, like me, are glad 2011 is on her way to that foreign country of the past.

19. Biology not Mythology

In the film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” my favourite lines are those spoken by the father who is intent on proving that so much of what we have today comes “ferrom er the Gerreek.” Well, here I’ve proved him right, in writing this blog, I have borrowed so much “from the Greek”, with an odyssey, Theseus, the minotaur and the made-up goddesses, Euphemia and Anaesthesia .

However, I must emphatically state that if Greek mythology has helped out a little, the traditions of Greek drama are strictly not invoked. My encounter with cancer is not a tragedy: I am not a victim of the gods, punished for my hubris, a come-uppance for my over-weaning pride. Even though for me the most important acts took place in a theatre, cancer is neither drama nor mythology. No. Cancer is biology. Cancer is mathematical: its abnormal cells divide and multiply in a similar way to normal ones. Its ways are predictable and understood only as a result of methodical scientific research and skill. Statistically, I had a 1 in 22 chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer because of my age. Apparently, genes, hormones and maternal age further upped the chances; all mathematical and biological.

Nor was my purpose in writing the blog that key element of Greek drama, katharsis, releasing the emotions, but about giving an account of a diagnosis, treatment and cure, primarily for friends who had pieces of the jigsaw but no-one had the whole picture. I hope too it is of some use to anyone in similar circumstances. If anything, the purpose is about trying to understand one small part of this massive monster we know as cancer, to possibly understand a bit more of the whole beast.

I could not have talked to anyone face to face about anything here beyond a few sentences. The blog has been like an empty room where I can show you my blessings and where you help me count them, where I safely leave some words and where you find them, and to those leaving kind encouraging messages in return, there could be no better gift.

From taboos to tattoos.

In 1769 Catpain Cook carried two new words for the English language in the HMS Endeavour and they find themselves together again in the luggage of today's blog.

Taboo – an area deemed by society to be forbidden; an unmentionable topic or word.
Tattoo - made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment.

Even if you think I’ve been open in what I’ve written about in this blog there are a few taboo areas I won’t venture into which may leave you disappointed by the end.
I would not have been able to tell you my story without predecessors stripping away those taboo areas and claiming the language and the subject they represent, including the prevalence of the small symbolic pink ribbons tied discreetly to lapels as a quiet everyday reminder, or the more brazen campaign of a thousand bras tied to railings as a one-off shock campaign to remind us that breast cancer should not be a hidden, unmentionable, taboo.

If “Careless talk costs lives” was a valuable wartime motto, could “Careful talk saves lives” be a useful motto in the war on cancer? Has the fear of talking stopped people from making that first step to the doctor? All too sadly, we know from personal experience and from statistics that this is likely to be true.

We’ve come a long way. The very word ‘cancer’ was taboo for years. People, afraid to admit the cause of death, whispered it, called it something else as if the ‘comatose minotaur’ would awaken in them unless charmed by the magic of the Goddess Euphemia and her secret language. I remember it as a child and felt the air chill as someone lisped ‘Cancer’, the “he-who-must-not-be-named”, the Lord Voldemort of our times. Bravo then to those brave enough to shout out the word ‘cancer’ in public, and bravo that they name the taboo body parts including uterine, ovarian and prostate. Keep shouting; your voices echo down the labyrinths and terrify the minotaur.

What is it that makes these words taboo? Is it their sexual connection? I fear it is. The taboos of old stick. Do we still, after all, like our grandparents’ generation, fear that cancer steals the function and attraction from the place where it is found? This must be it, and the taboos are sticky indeed.

Let’s not be afraid to seek help, to talk about the symptoms, the treatments and the cures; let’s deal with the disease with a proper vocabulary as early as we can so we have the best possible prognosis.

Yet there is still work to be done. If, in writing this blog, I have trodden on the toes of some taboos and made them squeal a little, then good, but I’m not brave enough to take all the taboos by the nose: self-perception and the sexual connection remain an unmentionable. It takes time to beat down the irrational belief that cancer steals our function and attraction.

And the tattoo? The taboo curtain has dropped. This will be something to laugh about in time, but for now, I borrow once more from the cryptic phrase-book of Euphemia: the tattoo they can offer me in March is an artistic illusion that something lost can be found.

17. How did you know? continued

A week later, on the 6th April, the first envelope with what would become a familiar postmark arrived, informing me an appointment had been made for a mammogram at 11 am the following Monday, 11th April.

I went to work as usual, and apart from keeping an eye on the time, did not feel anxious. Mammograms, I’ve found, although not exactly afternoon tea at the Ritz, are uncomfortable rather than painful, possibly because the staff are so kind and expert. This placing of the breast to be squashed between two metal plates sounds worse than it is, although it’s likely others might disagree.

The appointments were running late, and I was concerned to be away from work as I’d only expected it to take an hour or so. Besides, I was hungry. I felt edgy and uncomfortable sitting with other women in the light blue gowns as we awaited our results. The conversation revolved around the main reason we were there: breast cancer. Stories of friends who’d been diagnosed, their treatment, survival and recovery seemed to usher in the dark angel of reality. Despite the mood being upbeat, one woman was filled with dread and despair. The dark angel sitting beside her mimicked every sigh, every frown and at every intake of breath, sucked away optimism.

Eventually I was called in to see the consultant. The mammogram revealed calcifications, and although these had been present at a routine mammogram two years earlier, the x-ray suggested either these were clearer in this particular x-ray, a better picture, as it were, or, the calcifications were larger and more prevalent. As sometimes calcifications can hide cancerous cells, a biopsy was advised and arranged for the following Thursday, 14th April.

I phoned to reassure my husband that all was well, still confident that the biopsy would be a precaution and this was a ‘playing safe’ approach.

Thursday 14th April came. Lunch, and the jolly wit and banter of colleagues in our favourite local restaurant to say goodbye to a good friend who was leaving, completely took my mind off the forthcoming biopsy later that afternoon. If one is to face the firing squad, one should always do so on a good meal.

The biopsy was a little frightening. It followed the same procedure as the mammogram (stop reading now if you are squeamish) but a needle sort of “drills down” deep into the tissue to draw up cells. Once again, this was bearable because of the kindness, expertise and honesty of the staff. When I was told the ‘drilling’ would last for 45 seconds, it did. 45 seconds isn’t really that long, even in this situation.

If you Google search ‘biopsy’, some sources say you can go straight back to work afterwards, but I couldn’t have done. I went to bed when I got home and slept out the evening and night. We all deal with things differently: in all of these surgical procedures I distance my mind from what is happening, float it away somewhere else and pretend my body isn’t part of me, but it’s as if the trauma comes afterwards and the only way is to escape into sleep.

Luxury. I still had two more weeks of ignorance to enjoy.

16. How did you know?

There’s not much left to tell, but I’m conscious that in typical fashion, I’ve told this story the wrong way round, beginning at the end (almost) and as we approach the end, going back to the beginning. In the few days left, I hope to cover those things that I've been asked and haven't yet answered here.

The first is, what made you act to go to the doctor? How did you know?

Most of us are responsive to the education around breast cancer, have read the leaflets and posters and dutifully check for changes: lumps, bumps, shape and colour.

It occurred to me in the early weeks of March 2011 that for some time there had been a pain across the left-hand side of my entire chest. How long had it been there? I wondered. It felt like a time-of –the-month ache, but had gone on for well over a month. There were no other signs according to the check list and I felt completely well. Still, we are told that if we are worried in these matters to book an appointment with the GP and I did just that. A week or so later I had my appointment on 31 March.

When I was a four-year-old prodigy with a promising career as a hypochondriac, there were times I’d complain I’d got some sort of ache or pain and in those days when we had neither phone nor car, within hours my mum would have my coat on and be trooping me off to the doctor. Some time along the way I’d wonder where the pain had gone but we'd trudge the rest of the boring journey, wait in the dull room and be subjected to probes and discomfort. I couldn’t help but wonder, as I left work early to make the 4pm appointment, whether this was the little hypochondriac re-surfacing. I also had the sneaky feeling that I’d over-exercised with arm weights in the anti-bingo-wings-for-the-summer campaign I had been engaged in since Christmas. I’d forgotten how easy it was to strain muscles and for them to take time to heal. "I’m probably taking an appointment away from a really sick person as a result of my over-eager, vanity-inspired activity." I thought as I parked the car outside the surgery.

As an infrequent visitor to the medical centre, guilt gave way to pondering how it had happened that all doctors were now younger than me.

“I can detect a very small lump,” Youth declared, having completed the examination. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about but just to be sure I’ll make an appointment for you at the breast clinic.”

Oh well, at least I hadn’t wasted his time, I thought, as I went back to the car and was pleased the appointment was over early enough to grab half a pizza and take my son to his 6pm kick-off. Children's football has long given me a wonderful excuse to be in the open air after work and I welcomed this chance to enjoy the lengthening Spring evening. They were playing a team with a previous history of intense rivalry so full-on support was required.

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” I told my husband when we finally got home and had time to discuss the appointment, unaware of the blissful ignorance I would live in for a further month.