Living with lung cancer - Introduce yourself & come say hi

@reibur1951- wowow- do you ride with him? What are his limitations?

@armstg- I agree, but I'm there with you. I always expect way too much of myself. It leads me to a lot of frustrations to be sure. I'm sure that you can empathize with that! lol. Shoveling, raking, packing are all upper body exercises and will tax your breathing more than lower body. You didn't mention weights or pulmonary rehab. Pulmonary rehab is wonderful, it will teach you how to breath efficiently and get you moving better, although you seem to be doing pretty well in that aspect. I'm also 72. I've had an upper left and lower right lobectomy. I use to power walk 4 miles a day. That is history for me but I still walk, lift weights, etc. Do you think that you might be interested in pul. rehab?

No he goes alone - its his "thing" He does what he wants and then flops down and sleeps a lot - do not push him. Not been on a bike for years but probably should would be good way to loose weight... not sure if i could even ride one now without killing myself its been 1990/1991 since i been on one - my daughters son left his somewhere/or someone stole it when he was inside a local store - then he took his sisters and again ditto so I never replaced they where 16/18+ at time and no longer interested in bikes

Try just plain walking--for you. Don't try fro any marathons, or such. Walk a little each day even is it is around your back yard. That will help your anxiety. You can always work up to more walking as your health increases. If you don't have a back yard, walk down the street and in crease your steps weekly, or whatever works for you. Good luck with all you are handling.

It's my friend and you can not tell him anything 🙁 he thinks he knows it all... won't tell anything but at least he did to the doctor in Jan 🙁 you can imagine my shock but go with the flow... promised his mother (Died Dec 26 2018) and dad (died Jun 28 2018) details of past 2 years in other post on her and In Grief support been a very long 2 year...14 years I be here for him. Me I go till i drop or my body says "sleep" so much to do clean-up etc. and all taking the back seat....

@merpreb Thank you! This is going to be great to study. I will NOT find it boring. Am getting ready to have the works done at my hair salon--bye bye grey hair and hello very light blond color. I will start working with a woman on Monday who knows a lot about breathing and healing form this sort fo surgery. So, I"m hoping to build up strength, etc. Wish I could rake leaves and all that other stuff, but I have a really bad lower back that will not allow me to do this. So I walk, do stretching exercises. and specific back exercises. I"m 68 years old and feel good for my age. Thank you again for these bis of information about the lungs. Have a wonderful day.

@merpreb Great job! Many who are diagnosed seem to just accept it and move on...me, I like to understand it!

I had an upper right lobectomy at the end of July last year, so I know what you mean. My cyst was very low in the lobe, so I also had 33 radiation treatments and 4 rounds of chemo which all ended about 4 months ago. My 3-month CT scan showed no sign of cancer, but there is still some "glassiness" in my right chest consistent with that many radiation treatments. Personally, I'm blaming the continued need to sleep an extra hour to an hour and a half on the radiation. The shortness of breath, however, I think is certainly somewhat due to the fact that they cut out 20+% of my lung! Oh, I'm an otherwise healthy 58-year-old male.

I'm an early adopter of a Fitbit, which tracks my steps. I'm up to about 7,000 steps a day, or roughly 3.5 miles. I also climbed a skyscraper last Saturday. Yes, you read that right!

I had a friend die of lung cancer in 2014. I wanted to do something to honor her memory. I heard about these things called Fight for Air Climbs. Turns out they are the signature fundraising event of the American Lung Association. This was my 5th year as team captain of The Lung and the Breathless. Here in the Los Angeles area, we climb the 1,393 steps of the Aon Center in downtown LA. I have a 9-week training program I use to prepare for the climb. I had to modify it this year by adding 1.5 to 2 minute rest breaks which is the only way I made it on Saturday. They also record our times. I've done it in as little as 22 minutes in the past. This year, I expect they'll say it took me an hour!

I was positively impressed with the way my body responded to the training. There was no day-to-day perceptible difference. But the first week I climbed a total of 30 floors in 25 minutes. (I take the elevator to the basement, hit the 5 button, get out, climb to the 5th floor, take the elevator back down to the basement. Repeat.) By the 9th week I climbed 35 floors in 20 minutes. All along, I stop and catch my breath when I feel winded. I didn't feel like I had pushed myself any harder in the 9th week than I had in the first, even though I had climbed 5 more flights of stairs in 5 fewer minutes!

My doctor agrees and recommended that I do this regular exercise or get a personal trainer. Gently pushing your body a wee bit more each week WILL result in long-term progress. Another data point: a co-worker is a distance runner - mostly 10Ks and half marathons. A runner friend of hers had an upper right lobectomy. It took time, but she's running again! Apparently, over time, the other lobes do expand somewhat to fill in the hole that was created by our lobectomies.

So be gentle with yourself. Pick something you like such as walking, biking, climbing stairs -- something where you can measure your performance. Very gradually walk faster or walk quicker, rider farther, climb more stairs, whatever. Over time you WILL get stronger! You've probably noticed that we're not in our 20s anymore, so we recover a lot more slowly.

For the record, I still dream of actually being able to jog. I just end up panting too quickly. But I can walk up a shallow hill more briskly than I could 3 months ago! Baby steps.

Hope this helps with your expectations.

Matthew

@flusshund- Hi Matthew. It's nice tot talk to you again. How are you feeling? I love love love that you are climbing stairs. After my first lobectomy I went to Paris with my husband and I climbed every damn step of Montmartre- outside and in. I took my time, let people pass me and just kept plugging along. Inside the Sacre Coeur, the Church there are over 300 steps to the top of the dome. And there were many many more to get there.
I couldn't do it now but I loved doing it. I was so proud. I'm glad that you have motivation to keep going. With every day, week and month we get stronger. What is your usual exercise for the week when you aren't training?

Hi Merry.

To be determined! I've never been good about going to the gym just to go to the gym. I've always worked out for a purpose: the annual stair climb, weekend backpack trips, staying in shape for being a wilderness search and rescue canine handler, etc. But when I have no reason to be in shape, I become a slug. That has to change!

I saw a great movie titled "If You're Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast". In it, Carl Reiner interviews a bunch of folks in their 90s and asks how they did it. And these people are all happy and lively. It's a very positive movie. My favorite phrase was something like, "I'm 93 years old. Half my life is over!" Dick Van Dyke talks about why he works out. He said you work out in your 30s to impress the opposite sex. You work out in your 50s and 60s to prevent a heart attack. And you work out in your 80s to stay out of Assisted Living!

After the Super Bowl, I bought Tom Brady's TB12 book. He won his 6th Super Bowl at 40, so he must know something about keeping the body functioning! I've got a couple physical problems including osteoarthritis in the base of my left thumb that makes pushups impossible and a lot of traditional weight lifting painful. Some of the TB12 stuff is too extreme for me, but I like the workouts. He emphasizes working with bands instead of weights and makes a good argument. The hard part is that he lists 12 separate exercises for upper body, lower body and the core. And he recommends you do ALL of them at every workout! So I have 36 exercises to learn. Not that I feel like I HAVE to do all of them with every workout. I've definitely learned to just do what I can.

After that skyscraper, I'm going to take this week off and just stretch and walk at least my 7,000 steps a day. I have some shoulder impingement that friends have told me is the beginning of rotator cuff damage. I've just started carefully swinging Indian Clubs and the movement is helping. My initial plan will be to start doing my band "weight lifting" twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays and see how it goes from there.

Matthew