Cancer Blog
By Brian Zimmerman
Begun on July 31, 2021
Email: dyingman1@yahoo.com
My Dying Words
Entry #8
August 16, 2021
What’s in Your Gas Tank?
Here’s another of Brian’s dictums: “Everyone has a gas tank. When you have surgery (e.g., knee replacement), a serious injury or illness, most of the gas in your gas tank is going to healing you. There ain’t a whole lot leftover for everything else.” So, you may feel pretty good one morning and get up thinking, “I’m going to do some chores for a change,” and begin to try to do some work and find after a short while you’re thinking, “I need to sit down and rest for a while,” or maybe even, “I need to lie down for a while.” But, the good news is that as you heal, you need the gas in your gas tank less for healing and more for other activities.
This one certainly applies to cancer therapy as the cancer may sap your energy (I tell people I’m eating for two, except the second one is like Rosemary’s baby, an evil presence in me). But, in my case, the problem is the side effects of the cancer drugs that constantly make me feel weak, unsteady, and just plain tired. I have very low endurance, and, of course, because of the cancer in my lungs, get short of breath very quickly, which also makes me want to sit and rest. I do what I can, but I have to accept that a lot of the gas in my gas tank isn’t just used by the cancer, but in dealing with the chemo treatment drugs side effects and that won’t change until I’m off of them.
Make Those Deposits
Here’s another dictum: “If you have been exercising regularly, you’ve been making deposits in the exercise bank. So, when you get the bill that’s labeled surgery, serious injury, or serious illness, then you have something to pay that bill with. But, if you haven’t been making those deposits, you’re going to have a heck of a time paying that bill.” Of course, I’m not talking about a financial bill; I’m referring to your body’s ability to accept and heal from one of those three attacks. The best way to prepare for such an assault on your body is before the assault occurs, viz., by exercising regularly and controlling your weight (being significantly overweight creates a whole host of health issues, e.g., hypertension, diabetes, joint pain (knees, hips, back), breathing issues, and on and on. I rarely talked to patients about their weight as I assumed they’d heard it all before unless their weight was 400 lbs. or above. Then I told them that their problem wasn’t PT (they just needed to get up on their feet and quit sitting so much like most people). My feeling was that their eating problem wasn’t going to be solved with the right diet. They needed to treat their overeating as an addiction like alcoholism. They needed therapy but not the PT kind. And, most of them had an enabler as often they could no longer drive so someone was buying all that (usually junk) food and so needed to help and not hinder their “recovery”).
Watching TV Is Not a Form of Exercise
I’m not talking about becoming a body builder, but I am talking about some form of regular exercise. I can’t count the number of people who retire and decide that they worked hard their whole life and that they’re due for some rest, so they come home and sit in front of the television most of every day for years after they retire. I’ve had people who literally didn’t get out of their recliner except to eat or go to the bathroom. Those are the people who had the most difficulty dealing with one of those three health issues (surgery, injury, or illness) because one of the things that will contribute to trouble with recovery is being sedentary (sitting). One of the PT directives I gave those people was to not sit more than 1 hour before they got up on their feet and stayed up for more than a minute. I get that they didn’t feel well, or were in pain, or were weak, but it would only get worse if they continued to sit (most understood and agreed, but years of habit (in sitting) is hard to break. I think if they had just turned the TV off, or watched it only after dinner or something of that sort, then that would have pushed them to find something more active to do like a hobby, or contacting friends or family, etc. I used to tell patients that the TV is many people’s drug of choice as it really does seem to me to become an addiction that people just can’t let go of even when they know it’s bad for them.
Taking My Own Medicine
My wife and I have been members of one gym or another for years. When COVID hit, we dropped our gym membership and lifted weights at home. I think there’s been only one week during this entire episode when I couldn’t tolerate exercise. Many times I didn’t want to exercise, but when my wife asked if we could lift weights in the garage, invariably I would say yes, and found over and over that I felt much better after the exercise session than I had before. In fact, my oncologist has told me that the only certain method of helping a chemo patient to feel better is exercise. It’s getting people to try that “medicine” that is the hard part. It usually meant also that I slept better as well as I developed some real muscle fatigue and not just some drug/chemical fatigue, which doesn’t seem to be helped much by sitting or lying down for hours. I’m thinking that a lot of the weakness I feel is artificial not real muscle weakness, more than likely some neurological effect of the drug and would disappear if I stopped taking the medication. So, I want my muscles to remain as strong as I can get them and do as much exercise, and activities, as I can tolerate. On a typical day, I can tolerate one real physical activity, e.g., mowing the grass, which takes about 45 minutes to an hour. I got rid of the self-propelled lawn mower months ago, and bought a riding lawn mower that still takes a certain amount of energy for me to operate. On good days, I can do two physical activities, usually one in the morning, and then one in the afternoon. But, I don’t have that many good days so that’s more an exception than a rule. Even so, I try to do things like go grocery shopping for my wife if I’m feeling well enough just so I can do something that requires me to be up on my feet. Usually when I get home after doing an errand like that, I’m pretty much done for the day. I used up what little gas I had in my gas tank for other activities.
More dictums in my next Entry