Listen to your body....yeah right

Ross Creek Reservoir

Whenever I tell someone what treatments I had for breast cancer I always feel like I'm reciting a particularly macabre version of The Twelve Days of Christmas (and I have to stop myself adding in "and a partridge in a pear tree" at the end of the list).

For the record, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2008 and had two minor and one major surgeries (left breast mastectomy and trap flap reconstruction), six chemotherapy infusions, 25 radiotherapy treatments, 17 Herceptin  infusions, 380 Tamoxifen tablets (and counting) and more fondling of my left breast by complete strangers than I would have ever thought possible.


So why am I starting a blog now, after all that fun and fondling is over? Yes, it would have made sense to blog about the journey through treatment but I figured there were many women already doing that and doing it extremely well (my favourite being: love, cancer etc). Plus ... well, I just never got around to it. It’s amazing how lethargic a life-threatening illness can make you. But now I’m working through the challenges of getting fit again after treatment and  I thought writing about that may be of use to others in the same position. It'll be a blog about wellness instead of unwellness.

The hardest thing about getting back into running after breast cancer treatment – next to my complete lack of fitness after seven or eight months of no running – was the lack of information about just how to do it. As I prepared for my running comeback (counting down the days to the date when my radiation oncologist said I could run again), the most consistent information I was  given about getting back into it was “listen to your body.”

I’m not a violent person but if one more person had told me that I wouldn’t have been responsible for my actions.  I didn’t want vague advice. I wanted specifics. The problem with wanting specifics is, as anyone who has been through this will know, is that we’re all different.  There are different cancers, different drugs and surgeries and different reactions to these because we are all individuals. Doctors and exercise specialists can’t give you a formula because there isn’t one.

On my first run back my heart rate rocketed to 177bpm going up a small incline. I thought I’d survived breast cancer only to give myself a heart attack. I stopped and leaned on the fence around the lake at the Ross Creek Reservoir  (my most favourite place to run and pictured above), pretending to stretch (although I was actually trying to decide if I was having a heart attack). It suddenly came to me.  My body was talking to me. I thought perhaps I should start  listening.