by Jennifer Retter
Charlene Hanson's smile fills the room with life. The petite woman shakes my hand and glances at the camera, poised to take her image. "Hat or no hat?" she asks before adjusting the white fedora with a bright blue band on her head, complementing her blue swatch flowered shirt. She requests a cold water as we sit down for our interview. "The body absorbs cold water quicker, you know," she says matter-of-factly, a tidbit she learned recently.
I asked Charlene, her 101-pound frame dwarfed by the oversized chairs in the room, about her exercise routine. "Can I show you?" she asks excitedly, jumping up to demonstrate the exercises Stephanie, her trainer, assigned her. One breathing exercise requires sitting in a chair and reaching slowly toward the ground. "After I do it a couple times, I can reach the floor," Charlene says. It's no small feat, especially for a 67-year-old woman who beat breast cancer … twice.
Exercise = Strength That's why Charlene, along with other cancer survivors, comes to the Moncrief Cancer Institute's Survivorship Program to exercise twice a week with her trainer. Funded by a state grant, the Survivorship Program provides personal training, nutritional guidance, psychotherapy and an on-staff nurse to local cancer survivors.
"We provide a lot of different support systems, but exercise has been the most widely used service," Program Manager Elsa Chavez Inman said. "About 70 percent of our survivors are coming in to exercise."
After completing 12 weeks of personal training, building up their strength and capability to take more advanced group classes, survivors "graduate" from the program and are referred to local YMCAs with exercise components for survivors.
Chavez Inman said the program demand for personal training grew so quickly that the workouts went from a 15-week to a 12-week cycle. The Survivorship Program as a whole gathered so much interest that the program will be moving to a larger location in the fall. The center is working on adding a variety of new classes, too.
"I've been looking into having a tai chi class once a month to start with," Chavez Inman said. "We'll also offer a yoga class during the day."
Exercise = Health Exercising at the Moncrief Cancer Institute doesn't just help survivors feel better, though that is one of the goals. Exercise actually helps prevent the reoccurrence of cancer, Dr. Keith Argenbright explains.
"There are lots of different studies that say exercise is the best thing you can do to recover your abilities before your treatment," Argenbright said. "It's also the best thing you can do to prevent a reoccurrence."
Argenbright's theories align with the research conducted by Dr. Roshni Rao of UT Southwestern. In a feasibility study testing the impact of exercise on tumor size, Rao split a group of 10 women with large tumors into two groups. One group changed nothing major from their habits, and the other group participated in a regimented "Boot Camp." Then, both groups went through chemotherapy. At the conclusion of the Boot Camp study, Rao noted that the tumors of the Boot Camp participants shrunk while the control group's tumors remained the same.
Rao also explained that the Ki-67, or the proliferation index, measures how fast the cancer cells grow. Higher numbers mean the cells are growing faster.
"In my patients who went through Boot Camp with chemotherapy, the Ki-67 was 7 percent. In the other group that just went through chemotherapy, it was still in the 20s," Rao said. "That was the most exciting finding."
Exercise = Hope With the health benefits laid out, Survivorship Programs throughout Fort Worth encourage survivors to stay active. In addition to Moncrief, Baylor Health and Cancer Care Services offer assistance to survivors.
Since many programs are relatively new, survivors are just getting started. "This is something I wish more people would know about," said Carmen Tinajero, a 60-year-old survivor who also participates in personal training at Moncrief. "It's been so beneficial to me, and I know so many women could use this."
Moncrief's Survivorship Program made a world of difference to Charlene, too.
"There are just some parts of surviving cancer that you can't talk about with your friends or family," Charlene says with tears in her eyes. "That's what I love about being here; there's such a camaraderie among the survivors because we know what each other went through."
