Corpus

Laurence Fearnley

When you have treatment for cancer, information sometimes comes to you in a sideways fashion and not from the direction you expect. It didn’t seem weird, then, that it was from a newspaper article that I first learnt about the benefits of physical exercise during and after cancer treatment. The article detailed the closure of Expinkt, a gym and exercise programme that had been established by Associate Professor Lynnette Jones, a researcher in the field of Exercise Oncology. Expinkt was run by the University of Otago School of Physical Education, Sport and Exercise Sciences from 2009 until November 2021 (when  funding dried up). During that time, the article said, the programme had treated hundreds of people with cancer, mostly breast cancer survivors. Now it was going to re-establish itself as The Wellness Gym, a not-for-profit in new facilities outside the university.

I was fortunate to be accepted into The Wellness Gym programme in July 2022, fourteen months after successful surgery to remove a large sarcoma from my thigh. In the period following surgery I had basically redefined myself as ‘disabled’. Along with my tumour, my hamstrings had been removed, and my mobility and flexibility had suffered enormously. I had gone from walking 60-90 minutes a day on Dunedin’s Signal Hill tracks to shuffling along, unable to raise my knee or lift my foot more than a few inches from the ground. I was unable to perform the simplest tasks: crouching to pick objects off the ground, negotiating uneven ground and steps. Many things I wanted to do – like getting on a bike, or straddling barriers such as stiles – were impossible. I could not reach below my right calf, so pulling on trousers or putting on shoes was difficult. Surgery had left me with nerve pain, scar tissue and oedema: the feeling that my leg had been hollowed out and then repacked with damp and heavy kapok and stitched back together, like an old teddy bear.
[Read more…] about The Wellness Gym