Monday, December 12, 2011

David Haas - Fitness and Cancer- Physical Fitness Can Help

I have the privilege of David Haas writing a guest article for my blog today. David is a cancer patient advocate who cares very much about the well-being of people not only diagnosed with cancer but also their families and those who are in remission. You can check out David’s blog at http://www.mesothelioma.com/blog
Read this fantastic article written by David and let me know what you think of it in the comments section:)

XOXO - Melanoma Diva




Fitness and Cancer- Physical Fitness Can Help

It can be difficult enough to motivate a healthy person to get up and work out on even the best day. When it comes to getting a cancer patient or cancer survivor to exercise, it can be an even greater battle. Dealing with such a difficult illness, not to mention undergoing exhausting chemotherapy and radiation treatments, doesn’t leave many cancer patients rearing to get up and head to the gym. But exercise - even light exercise - can help boost dwindling energy and prevent cancer from recurring.

Many people who have battled cancer - and won - have keeping cancer away for good at the top of their priority list. Fitness and exercise can help with this goal. Not only can a healthy diet and regular exercise prevent cancer from occurring in the first place, but it can also prevent cancer from recurring. This is mainly due to the fact that people who are overweight after going through cancer treatments have a shorter life span than those who maintain a healthy weight - exercise can help people to control their weight.

Exercise has benefits for both disease-free people and people with cancer, but cancer patients may reap even more rewards than their healthy counterparts. Every regular exercise will enjoy benefits that include gaining muscle strength, having a leaner body and warding off weight gain. But additional benefits include an improved mood, more self-confidence and less fatigue…things that are all extremely important after undergoing radiation treatment. People who have cancer, whether they have common cancer like breast cancer or a rare one like mesothelioma, they often experience a depressed mood and extreme fatigue. Exercise can combat both of these problems.

It’s best to start exercising as soon as you can after getting a cancer diagnosis and undergoing treatment. While fatigue will make you feel like you simply can’t get up to work out, or that if you do, you’ll feel even more tired, the opposite is actually true. While starting a workout program may make you sleepier than you usually are, exercising actually increases your energy level. This is a huge help for cancer patients who feel constantly fatigued - instead of leading an increasingly sedentary lifestyle; people who are dealing with cancer can actually increase their energy little by little.

It’s important to perform a variety of exercises, including stretching, aerobic exercise and resistance training. Stretching and increasing flexibility is important to do even if vigorous exercise isn’t possible at the moment. Aerobic exercise is the kind that will burn calories the quickest and help you to maintain your weight.



Monday, December 5, 2011

I hate Meatballs.

I realize I really do suck at keeping up with this blog - but hey, here I am ... You will learn I tend to "write" more when I have things weighing heavy on my mind - I find putting my thoughts to paper very cathartic - like releasing the pressure on a pressure cooker, I can ventilate and let the steam out which provides me an important emotional release! Sounds crazy I know but it's the truth.

I continue to have good days and bad days. I have found that when I let my guard down and try to actually "live" something comes up and knocks the hell out of my knee caps and I'm back down again. Life... what a mysterious 4 letter word.

I last blogged about the lesion on my leg that popped up out of no where - thankfully the results were benign. Sweet - another hurdle passed! Well, that was short lived... it wasn't long after that I was standing in the nurses' station talking to my divas when I just happened to rub my hand across my neck and noticed a ping pong ball size swelling ... my first thoughts - Oh shit! So, I took off to the restroom to investigate in the mirror... hmm, sure enough it looks like a meatball bulging out of my neck. My heart sank - I managed to pull myself together and immediately find Dr. E to ask his opinion. "Yep, I need to see you in a gown from the waist up to check your lymph nodes"... I feel like I have become a damn experiment project. I thought about it and decided I would hold off and just keep an eye on it - after all it wasn't hurting. That weekend I spent several hours researching supraclavicular lymph nodes and causes for swelling, etc.. needless to say nothing positive came out of it so I just dropped it.  I'm tired, I'm worn out and I'm so mentally dead with this "C" word. I want to get through this last month of 2011 with no bad news. Am I scared it's something to do with cancer? Absolutely! But I don't want to deal with it - I just want to be left alone and try to live my life the best way possible.

No one knows what it feels like to constantly look behind your shoulder waiting for the next "fucking" from cancer unless you are dealing with it first hand. I can sit here all night and try to describe every feeling that I feel but you still will never fully grasp the fear, the pain, the unknown unless it happens to you.

I came across an article tonight on the internet regarding Guiliana Rancic announcing she will undergo a double mastectomy. In making her decision to have the double mastectomy she stated "In the end, all it came down to was just choosing to live and not looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life." I know exactly how that feels - looking over my shoulder the rest of my life... it's not a life or should I say the best quality of life. I send many prayers to Guiliana and her family. Her chances of a recurrence will be less than 1 percent - thats awesome. I wish my surgeon could have looked at me and given me a less than 1 percent recurrence!

So as it stands today - I'm just watching my "meatball" neck. If that changes - I'll let you know!



XOXO - Melanoma Diva