Erik MH:

Not quite a walk in the park

When I first learned that I had can­cer (while attend­ing Campers’ Week at Pine­woods), a good friend urged me to spend as much time as pos­sible out­side, walk­ing in the sunshine.

And when my fath­er-in-law heard last Septem­ber that I had can­cer, he wrote a very sup­port­ive note with many kind thoughts. This is the most rel­ev­ant today:

There’s also great expan­sion in stud­ies of post-can­cer rehab­il­it­a­tion. Get­ting the right kind of exer­cise is, none too sur­pris­ingly, hugely bene­fi­cial. I was in an exper­i­ment in which some patients received exer­cise and diet treat­ments and some not (I was in the first group). Only a year later, the bene­fits of exer­cise were so obvi­ous they were redo­ing the exper­i­ment: both groups were doing the exer­cises, only one the diet analysis.

And when I first met my sur­geon, he told me that I should “Walk! Walk every day! Walk for at least a half hour!”

Since I wanted everything to go as well as pos­sible, I fol­lowed their advice. In early Septem­ber, when I was start­ing on chemo- and radi­ation-ther­apy and was weak from weight-loss, it was a bit of a chal­lenge. But the warm Septem­ber sun (lit­er­ally every day in that freak­ishly clem­ent Septem­ber) and fresh air soon began doing their work: I looked for­ward to each day’s ven­ture, walk­ing farther and faster each day.

As the days cooled and the rains (and wind) returned in Octo­ber, many of the walks were less pleas­ant, but it wasn’t cold — and I could tell how much good the exer­cise was doing me — so I persisted.

On the 27^th of Novem­ber, they sur­gi­fied me for almost eight hours. Early the next morn­ing, dur­ing rounds, my sur­geon again told me that I should “Walk! Walk every day! Walk for at least a half hour! Start today!” Sigh. This was the last thing I felt like doing, of course, but with the help of Kar­en and the LNA I was able to stand up and get all (six? eight?) of the tubes and cables untangled — and headed off with Kar­en to do a couple of laps around the ward.

And it pro­gressed slowly from there. By the last even­ing at the hos­pit­al, Kar­en and I walked a huge dis­tance down the long mul­ti­level arcade, whence pas­sages branched mak­ing for many dif­fer­ent depart­ments and even entire oth­er build­ings. It felt great!

But the next day, when I came home from the hos­pit­al, things were dif­fer­ent. There was ice! There was snow! And the wind was bit­ter cold! And I found that after spend­ing two weeks at exactly 72ºF, and hav­ing re-lost all the weight that I’d gained back in the autumn, I just couldn’t stay warm enough out­side no mat­ter how quickly I walked. So after a couple of walks that first week back (at 15ºF with a nice brisk wind), I gave up. No more walks!

Fast-for­ward three weeks: it’s just as cold out­side; there’s even more snow and ice; and I’m leth­ar­gic and achy. In my fol­low-up vis­it to the sur­geon, I was told that I had to get out there and “Walk! Walk every day! Walk for at least a half hour! Drive down to The Home Depot and walk there if it’s too cold!”

The Home Depot didn’t sound very appeal­ing — and the closest one is 90 minutes away! — but it got me think­ing a little bit. I made a list of gyms to look at down in Barre, Mont­pe­li­er, and Ber­lin (all 35 minutes away in the same vec­tor). I wasn’t very excited about this idea. I’ve always felt that gyms were a waste of time and money — that people in need of exer­cise should just do more work with their bod­ies: climb stairs instead of tak­ing the elev­at­or; park fur­ther away from the store and walk; don’t drive at all if pos­sible — walk or bicycle.… And so I don’t believe that I’ve ever been in a gym since high school (oth­er than our loc­al school’s gym when it’s been coöp­ted for the Apple Pie Fest­iv­al, Town Meet­ing, and that kind of thing, of course).

So I had no idea where to start, oth­er than work­ing through the pos­sible gyms in a logist­ic­ally effi­cient man­ner. I star­ted at the south end with a Jazzer­cise: it was gloomy, smelly, and unbear­ably loud. Ugh. The next one on my list was closed: they were only open in the early morn­ing and from mid-after­noon into the even­ing. Check­ing them out was tak­ing less time than I’d ima­gined, but I was begin­ning to think I might not come up with an estab­lish­ment that would fit the bill.

My idea was that I’d find some­where where they’d under­stand the kind of rehab­il­it­a­tion I wanted for my body, and give me a set of low-impact exer­cises designed to slowly increase my muscle mass and strengthen my trunk and just set me on a path towards again hav­ing a rel­at­ively fit middle-aged body again — and make sure that all my hope­fully-com­ing weight gain wouldn’t end up in a big ring around my midsection!

As I drove out of the park­ing lot for the closed gym, I spot­ted a sign: “Rehab­GYM: Entrance at rear.” Huh. That one had not been on my list. Well, I was right here, look­ing for a gym. Why not take a look?

Remem­ber the para­graph (only two up) that began “My idea was”? Well, my idea was already actu­al­ized as the Rehab­GYM. I’ve now been four times, and fully plan to con­sist­ently attend two or three days each week for at least the next month or two. The first month’s mem­ber­ship (no addi­tion­al com­mit­ment) included four free hours with a per­son­al train­er — who imme­di­ately “got” where I was com­ing from and why I was there. He gave me exer­cises which are def­in­itely stretch­ing things out, get­ting my heart rate a bit elev­ated, and deep­en­ing my breath­ing. Most of these exer­cises I can do (or do vari­ants of) at home, too. But the most import­ant thing is that the leth­argy is gone. And the aches feel more healthy. And I know I’m doing the right thing. 👍🏼

• ← Prev
  2018-01-01
• Next →
  2018-04-16