03/23/2022
One of the things that continues to amaze me in my work with cancer survivors is their tolerance of a multitude of conditions in their assumption that 'this' (fill in the blank) is their new normal. The role of therapy and particularly my specialty, lymphatics, is to help people attain their best possible life during and after cancer treatment. I had an experience recently with a breast cancer survivor that has lymphedema. She had grown accustomed to a hard spot in her breast that was painful to the touch and reported it had been that way since her surgery. After I worked on her with resolution of the hard spot she was worried that the muscle flap reconstruction had failed and had 'come undone'. Of course I explained fibrosis and how the manual lymph drainage assisted normal flow which resulted in the change in tissue texture.
It's experiences like this that remind me of how very grateful I am to do this work and just how good it feels to make a difference.