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Maree72's avatar
Maree72
Member
11 months ago

Last nights webinar - Let’s cut through all the hype! Why exercise?

Last night I jumped onto the webinar about exercise, 
Did any one else on here also watch?

I found it to  be very insightful, but due to the fact I was trying to mullite task as most of us do (haha), listen and read the comments as well as add in my bit, I missed a bit about strength exercise twice weekly, 

I found the presenter to be very helpful and of course very knowledgeable. 
But I do have to add in I totally agree about barriers in this area, 

Especially the costs that we don't see coming to help us on our way with looking after ourselves, well at least I didn't.
I too lost everything once diagnosed, and surgery took place, as in earning my wages, so now my husband takes care of us all with his wage, So budgeting is a absolute must to make it through every week.
So having extra add on thrown at us, like I would think many, can completely snow ball ones weekly budget to keeping everything on an even keel.

I fully agree with the some of the comments, 
You have to enjoy your chosen method of exercise, or you wont stick with it, (that's me) and I personally hate walking, and I'm not a runner at all. I'm a swimmer and yoga lover, I would love to be back involved with dragon boating, but I live no where near the water here in Brisbane and with the cost of fuel these days, here's my 1st barrier, how can I afford to get there? the hours drive to the river doesn't bother me, it the cost of fuel. maybe one day

My wish would be for these people who are trained in this field of exercise and rehab to be apart of our medical team, as I said in the comments last night, 

We get given a surgeon, a breast care nurse, a team of oncologists, we get told about the Lymphoedema physio (that I personally only saw twice), once prior to surgery to give me the talk of what I could be expecting once they took off my lymph nodes, and then once afterwards as a check up, now I'm left to my own devices to manage this with no really check up at all. It would be good if this was also part of our care, with follow ups over the course, to let us know how our movements are going and provided us some sort of feedback on how are healing is going or possibly not going.

But where is the team that help us with getting the correct ways of managing exercise?
Again I feel we are left to source this ourselves, again at our own personal cost.

Wouldn't this be great if this was also part of our recovery medical treatment plan?

I asked my team once I ended up with grade 3 Peripheral neuropathy to please send me off to physio so I can start to sort out my loss of strength in my hands and arms, it was so bad with pins and needles,
I couldn't hold onto a pen, unscrew a bottle cap, or even pour a glass of water from the water jug, with out spilling it all over the bench and nearly dropping the jug on the floor, my feet had also started not to work as well. I had to keep telling myself to pick up my feet, or I caught myself tripping over them.

To this day I still have not recovered from this side effect from chemo.
I'm now still waiting to be contacted by the people I have been refereed out to start any form of rehab for this, its been 2 months now and still nothing. I understand there is a wait list, but also frustrating as this could also be classed as strength exercise, that was being talked about last night.

So I chose to use up my own personal physio Medicare referral for another issue I have, that's not related to my breast cancer, just so I could try and get some form of quality of life back, but it wont be long now till I have to pay his full fee, I only have one more session to use, and then I have to wait till Oct this year before my GP can do up another referral for physio.

I've now found a pod cast I can listen to on Spotify for yoga, so I can try and get more of that in my daily or weekly routine  here at home, 
Thankfully the community pool is $6.00 entry fee, 
I have found a local cancer care yoga class provided by our council where I live here in Brisbane. that is free to attend.

Afterpay can come in handy if required, may not suit everyone, but I can use that with another local yoga studio as they offer this payment method. 
One day I would love to pay for things straight up with out needing a buy now pay later platform.

Please don't think I'm just having a sook and poor me , that's not what my thoughts are about here, 
its more about how can we voice that we need to add these very important people into our medical care team, so we can all recover fully to the best of our own ability with minimal cost to the cancer patient, as we all know so many of us have different barriers that prevent us taking part in things that are unachievable for us to get to, 
I feel Cost plays a huge part in this for many.

This truly needs some sort of funding to provide this service to all.

Well that's my ramblings for the morning, that I wanted to share.

Thanks you to the team who provided this webinar. It was worth my time to sit and listen and watch.

And I'm that person who use to have wasted gym memberships cause exercise was never my thing, but now it has to be as it was said last night  "its a form of medicine" and I for one, like everyone else, have no desire to ever repeat this breast cancer nightmare ever again, if I can help it, so exercise I will.