Himalayan Salt Stones, Hot Tubs, and Other Things You Worry About When You’re a Cancer Survivor

Himalayan Salt Stones looking innocent enough...

Well, I’ve been back at the gym for six months now and I haven’t lost an ounce.  The tamoxifen I take to prevent a recurrence of breast cancer is thwarting my efforts to shed the flab I put on during treatment.  I know, I know.  I should be grateful that the pills haven’t given me hot flashes, or night sweats, or made me homicidal, like they did to someone I know.  (Yikes!)  I have virtually no side effects at all.  It’s just that I expected to shed a few pounds in exchange for working out like Jennifer Beals 4-5 days a week.  I guess the tamoxifen knows it has the upper hand here.  It’s not like I’m going to stop taking it for the sake of vanity.  So for now I try not to focus on my thunder thighs.

I attack my workouts with a vengeance but it’s hard to conquer the sense of doubt that comes with a cancer diagnosis no matter how many miles I clock on the spinning bike.  As odd as it sounds, I find myself wondering sometimes if all this exercise could actually hurt me.  Like, I catch myself wondering if exercise might somehow “stir things up” inside.  Things that are better off left alone. This goes back to an exchange I had with a friend about the potential pitfalls of massage therapy during (or, in my case, just after) chemo.  

To put our conversation in context, you should know that just about everything you do as a cancer survivor can give rise to feelings of self-doubt.  Take food, for example.  Organic food is good for you, but worrying too much about what you eat can cause major stress, which is bad for you.  Which to prioritize?  An organic food diet or a more relaxed attitude towards life?  Which is more likely to lead to good health down the line?  Nobody knows. 

When I was first diagnosed, I had the fanciful idea that I would go all organic.  Well, it’s not like it was a conscious decision.  It’s just that my husband and I made a beeline for Whole Foods a few days after I was diagnosed, almost instinctively.  As we browsed the aisles, he looked at me and said, “So this is where all the cancer patients shop, eh.”  We handed over a few hundred dollars for an apple, an orange, and a bottle of kefir and then we got the hell out of there.  We found ourselves back at our regular supermarket the very next week.  I don’t mean to poke fun at anyone who chooses to go organic. Avoiding pesticides is an eminently rational decision.  It’s just that an all organic diet would have been hard for us to maintain.  We decided that changing our entire lifestyle because of my diagnosis would be disruptive and that the stress of disruption might be more harmful to our health than conventional produce.    

Trying to decide whether to forego things you love is of course much trickier than incorporating new habits you’re not crazy about anyway.  Which brings me back to the time I almost flipped out over a massage.  I was approaching the end of four months of chemo and I mentioned to a friend that I had booked a trip to a spa to mark the occasion.  “I thought I’d heard that cancer patients aren’t supposed to have massages,” she told me.  "Oh shit.  Now I’m supposed to worry about massages too?" I thought.  After a bit of googling, I ran it by my doctor and she assured me that there was no scientific evidence to support the idea that massage “stimulated the lymphatic system” (the words used in the literature) enough to “stir things up inside” (my words), so I tromped off to the spa.  

The thing is, it’s hard to banish an idea from your head once it’s been planted there.  All that speculation about the effect of massage on the lymphatic system had me on edge as I checked in for what was supposed to be a relaxing experience.  What if I was asking for trouble?  I considered turning around and running out of there to save myself from catastrophe, but I didn’t want to give in.  I had science on my side, after all.  Besides, I deserved a massage, damn it!  I laughed to myself as I perused the menu of options and saw how many of them claimed to “stimulate the lymph system.”  My imagination ran wild as I imagined what death by Himalayan Salt Stones would be like.  (May not be a bad way to go, I thought.) 

In the end something held me back (and not just the price tag) and I opted for the less risky-sounding Wellness Massage instead.  I mean, seriously, how on Earth could anyone be afraid of a Wellness Massage?  Still, a little voice inside kept nagging at me.  I wavered.  Should I stay?  Should I go?  I had all of these crazy thoughts swirling around in my head, but the scented candles and the herbal tea enticed me to stay.  Once I changed into a fluffy white robe I figured that I had reached the point of no return.  The massage was heavenly, by the way.

Now you should know that I’m a mom so this wasn’t a super fancy spa.  It was located inside of a hotel with a cool pool that my kids happen to adore.  I, for my part, like the hotel because I can watch the kids go down the water slide from inside my perch in the hotel's hot tub.  Did I mention that the slide is attached to a replica of the Mayflower and that the hot tub is inside of a replica of the Plymouth Rock?  It's awesome.  

New England kitsch at its best.

It just so happens that I’d also heard that I would never be able to soak in a hot tub again after my surgery, which was scheduled for the following week, because ... you guessed it, the hot water messes with your lymph system.  This is a problem if you've had lymph nodes removed.  So I spent hours upon hours in that hot tub.  In the end my surgeon only removed one lymph node so I don’t have to worry about hot tubs like I thought I'd have to.  Phew!  I’d love to know what breast cancer survivors in Japan are supposed to do, though.  Swear off bathing forever?  I mean, the bathtubs in their homes are heated to something like 400 degrees.  Sheesh.  

So what do zumba, conventional produce, massage, and hot tubs have in common?  All have the power to provoke a crisis of confidence in a cancer survivor.  While the things that put us on high alert may differ, the lack of trust in our own instincts is fairly common.  You have no idea what you did wrong in the first place so you worry that you might mess up again.  On the other hand, you have no idea what you did wrong so you have no idea what to change.  

Living with all of the conflicting advice out there is a bit like managing those terror alerts issued by the government.  Yes, you might get attacked at a parade but you can’t stop going to parades.  Yes, that apple or that tap water might give you cancer, but you can’t swear off eating or drinking.  You can take precautions, but you’ve got to go on living.  You can’t be afraid of everything or the cancer wins.  And I choose not to let the cancer win.  

My goal?  To keep the terror alert level at Low.  Next time maybe I’ll write about the few times the threat level has spiked in the past few months, but for now I want to revel in the memory of how I refused to cower in the face of a massage and a very silly looking hot tub.  Next time I might even go for the Himalayan Salt Stones.