Cancer And Giving It Some Oomph

When you give it some oomph, you give it some welly and a bit of clout.

You give it power, strength and put some mustard on it.

There’s no mistake that the last letters of oomph refer to miles per hour.

This is about giving life some gas, gusto and ginger.

That’s right, foot down, give it some juice and the ol razzle dazzle.

The thing is when you have cancer and you’re having treatment, giving it a bit of oomph might not be something you can muster.

When your system is full of chemo then believe me you don’t feel full of beans, you’re full of poison. Your get-up-and-go is hiding under a rock.

I get it.

But as treatment starts to wane and your body starts to feel a bit more human again then giving it a bit of oomph will be good for you.

We can feel low on energy at the best of times and treatment certainly messes with our battery power but we also need to feed this energy.

I was always told to keep active during treatment and afterwards and as hard as that was, it paid off and still does to this day.

Exercise before treatments and during treatments helps you deal with what’s coming and the various side effects that hit us like a ton of bricks. It’s really important for rehabilitation post-treatment and for helping with late effects too.

Being a fresh-air freak, I have to get my daily dose of ‘luft’ and that means getting up and at ’em. Chemo and radiotherapy really fatigued me but making just a little bit of effort made me feel better.

For immunotherapy treatment, exercise can help power the therapeutic effect.

Aerobic exercise amplifies the effects of immunotherapy and as someone on active immunotherapy treatment, I can certainly say that it does just that!

The problem with treatments and feeling knackered all the time means we spend a lot of time cooped up and that can be bad for us as we are breathing in the impure air that circulates around a confined space.

By giving it some oomph and exercising, we can energise ourselves, strengthen our immune system and feel mentally refreshed. Bit by bit your zing and zip returns!

I’m not pretending this is easy because it certainly isn’t and the first barrier to get over is mentally making that decision to try.

No one expects you to walk for miles when you are having chemo. Different regimes and intensities will dictate what we can and can’t do so it’s not use comparing ourselves either.

If someone else can go for a 5K run during treatment and you can’t, that’s the way it is. Don’t feel bad! Different cancers, different treatments and different responses.

It’s also worth drawing the distinction between physical activity and exercise too as the latter is planned, structured, repetitive and intentional with a goal in mind (Stephen, 2024).

I do believe it’s important to get into a regular habit of daily exercise so your get-up-and-go can get-up-and-go and you can rediscover your boomchika boom boom and keep it moving.