Cancer Rehabilitation

Cancer treatment saves lives and takes a physical toll. Surgery leaves stiffness and scarring, chemotherapy causes fatigue and sometimes nerve symptoms, radiotherapy tightens tissue, and long periods of reduced activity cost muscle and fitness.

The counterintuitive finding about fatigue

Cancer-related fatigue is not ordinary tiredness and does not resolve with rest. The evidence consistently shows that appropriate exercise reduces it, while rest tends to deepen it. This is one of the best-supported findings in cancer rehabilitation and one of the least widely known.

That does not mean pushing hard. It means regular, moderate, well-paced activity, adjusted around treatment cycles.

What we help with

• Fatigue management through paced, progressive exercise
• Shoulder movement after breast surgery — stiffness and cording are common and respond well to early, appropriate movement
• Lymphoedema risk and management — see lymphoedema
• Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy — numbness and altered sensation in the hands and feet, where balance work reduces falls risk
• Maintaining strength and bone health, particularly with hormone therapies
• Breathlessness after lung surgery or radiotherapy
• Scar management

Working with the oncology team

Exercise is adjusted around blood counts, treatment cycles, bone metastases and other medical factors. We ask for guidance from the treating oncology team before starting, and we work within it. Where there are bone metastases in particular, loading is modified carefully.

Timing

Rehabilitation can start before treatment — going into surgery or chemotherapy fitter improves tolerance — and continues through and long after it.