A month ago – on September 13th Sloan Kettering had a conference entitled Cancer and Exercise. It was videoconferenced to their satellite offices, and I attended at the Sleepy Hollow offices. A rehabilitative medicine physician and an RN who is also a certified personal trainer gave the presentations.
It was interesting – good but without any dramatic insights. As expected, they encouraged exercise while you are undergoing therapy – either radiation or chemo. They set pretty basic standards – three to five days a week, cardiovascular work and some strength work. Each individual was different, and had to determine their own intensity levels, etc.
The rehab medicine doc made a couple of points, which I didn’t know. He said that fatigue related to chemotherapy, which most people suffer from to one degree or another is typically not relieved by rest. I found that very interesting. He also said that fatigue is typically worse four to five days after treatment “at the nadir of cell count.” I have found I feel the worst from about day seven to ten. I am currently at day eight after chemo session #3, and I am suffering from a little fatigue. However I did go to the gym tonight. I cut back a bit – rode the exercise bike for 14 minutes to warm up, and then lifted weights (actually used weight machines – I rarely use free weights these days) for about 25 minutes.
In the past six weeks I’ve found that when I am a little bit fatigued and go to the gym for an abbreviated workout, I feel much better afterwards. Tomorrow I will try and do 40-50 minutes of cardiovascular work (on the bike and an elliptical trainer) along with 10 or 15 minutes of stretching.
The “fatigue” thing is kind of funny and difficult to describe. It’s not like you’re tired or rundown, or exhausted. It’s more your body telling you something’s not quite right (a bit like the feeling you have with a concussion) and you can’t get out of second gear.
The RN / personal trainer aimed her part of the talk at people who maybe were a bit older than I, and hadn’t exercised in years. So her game plan wasn’t that useful (doing housework was good, deep breathing was good, walking with your arms pumping was wonderful, etc). However she also made some interesting points. She said if you keep exercising during treatment, your exercise performance will drop 50% and post-treatment it (your exercise performance) will take two to three months to build back up. If you stop exercising during treatment, your exercise performance will drop to zero, and it will take six to nine months to build back up.
So far my exercise performance hasn’t dropped at all – but I’ve only had three chemo sessions. So we’ll see what happens over the next three plus months, as my therapy will run into January. But my plan is to continue exercising, five or six days a week.
Note – the gym I use is three minutes from my house and five minutes from my office. That helps a lot!
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