PYNKS support group

Saturday, I gave a talk at the Mount Hospital for the PYNKS support group. They are a group of women living with metastatic breast cancer. One woman in particular described how her oncologist had a list of about 20 chemotherapy drugs that she has been running through one after another continuously for almost 7 years now. Most of the women were worried that exercise would not be safe for them, and all of them found they lacked energy to do normal gym sessions. It was amazing to talk to them and see they haven't given up hope on anything.

 Read about what we discussed after the jump.

I shared with them the home exercise routine I developed and described how to modify it to meet each woman's needs (there were not too many women there, so it was nice to be able to give each individual attention and answer specific questions). We got into conversations about different aspects of fitness and treatment, and together put our heads together to think up new solutions.

Two of the main things we thought up together: 1st, if cancer has metastasized to the bone, you would want to be careful to not put too much strain on the bone, which could be done through traditional weight lifting or other exercise activities. One thing you could do in any case when there's a bone injury or pain is exercise in the water. But what we came up with in our discussion was: do isometrics. Isometrics are when you contract a muscle without moving the limb; i.e. you flex/squeeze the muscle while being still. For the woman who brought up the question, she was worried about tumor metastisis at the back of her hip, so I told her to do isometric contractions of her glutes, which she could do just sitting there. Isometrics need to be held for a while to truly work the muscle well, and depending on the fitness already, could require 1 minute or more of tension.

The other big question was about dealing with lymphodema swelling around the latisimus dorsi and shoulder blades. Two women were particularly annoyed with swelling at this site, and couldn't reach to massage it themselves. PLEASE NOTE--WHAT I'M ABOUT TO DESCRIBE HAS NOT BEEN TESTED, AND COULD BE AT THE MINIMUM UNCOMFORTABLE, AND AT WORST COULD BE UNSAFE. IT COULD THEORETICALLY BE USEFUL, BUT AGAIN, IT HAS NOT BEEN TESTED. IF YOU DO ATTEMPT THIS METHOD, PLEASE BE CAREFUL AND START VERY GENTLY. I had the thought to basically do a softer version of foam rolling, like you would do to work the lactate and knots out of your legs. To make it softer, take a mostly solid cylinder--like a poster tube--and wrap it up in towels. Don't wrap them too tight so that there's extra give in them. For even more padding, place a thin pillow between your body and the roll. Place the roll on the ground and lie on it on your back, with the length parallel to the spine, about mid way through the shoulder blade (or wherever the swelling starts). Slowly roll over to your side, letting the roll squeeze the fluid back toward the front and toward the lymph system. Use your arms and legs to help support your weight so it's not all pressing down onto the pad.