A Healthy Dose of Routine

Well good morning,

Today this comes a little earlier than usual and the cause of which will be one of todays topics; routine. When going through cancer treatments you always hear from the nurses how important it is to develop a routine. Having only 2 days left in my induction treatment, and also having been at home for a couple days, I am not only starting to realize just how right the nurses are, but also how many different steps are required to have a healthy routine. In addition, I have realized that you are not kept in the hospital for the first month to just recover from the chemo, but I think an even bigger part is so the nurses can teach you the routine that you require to beat the chemo and steps once you are out of the hospital.

Now routine is a funny thing. Most people would hear the word and instantly associate negative connotations to it. I know I used to. You always hear, "oh he/she is stuck in a rut". I agree ruts are bad, but they are where routine is taken to an extreme level and your life is no longer being lived but every minute planned meticulously. But the interesting thing is although most people associate negatively with the word and act of routine and are almost afraid of it, they already have many of the vital steps in their life to achieve their healthy dose of routine.

I am specifically using the phrase dose of routine because you don't really realize how important setting up a healthy routine is until your life is turned upside down. I believe now that it is the second most important aspect required when fighting cancer (tomorrow's topic is the most, forgive me for my hollywood style plug :) ) Now the tricky part about routine is that I am starting to realize is there is no complete step by step guide that says do all these things and do them in this order and you will have a perfect routine. You will have to find the little intricate steps that work best for you but I will reflect on some of the major steps I have learnt along the way and maybe you can incorporate some of those to help set up your healthy dose. Now some of the lessons I have learnt may seem obvious. If you were to have read the list to me 50 days ago I would looked at the list not thought much out of it and moved on. It wasn't until going through cancer that I realized that there is a lot more to each step than I thought. So hopefully this list will give each of you something to reflect on in your life and maybe make some changes to achieve a healthier dose of your personal routine.

When going through chemotherapy it zaps almost all your energy. It puts you into a state of exhaustion where you could literally lie in bed for days with the only reason to get up being to go to the washroom (and even then you could get things from the nurses to go beside so you don't even have to get up. Don't worry I always got up to go to the bathroom ;) ). It was during this time that I learnt the importance of setting up little routines. I now truly believe that having a proper level of routine in your life allows your mind to stay ultra-focused and motivated on the task at hand. One of the first rules I made going into chemo for myself, is no matter what I would shower everyday. Now to most this seems pretty intuitive, but until you feel utter and complete exhaustion you don't realize how important something so simple is. There would be days where the exhaustion was so complete that by the end of the shower I would be so wiped I would need a nap to recover from it, but it was worth it every time. It always revitalized not just the body but also the mind but adding a touch of normalcy back into your life.

Another piece of routine is probably the most common thing that people try to work on, Exercise. I bet this makes is the #1 resolution every year that never gets followed through. I know I have had many years where exercise was the same place on my resolution list at the end of the year as it was at the beginning. This year was the first year where I was actually following through on it before I became ill. Exercise for a cancer patient is completely different from in normal life but the concept is the same. For us exercise is just getting up and walking around. And this is something the nurses push tirelessly. They don't like to see the patients just lying in bed because it can lead to a whole mess of issues like infection and pneumonia. Now it is a tricky balance in the hospital of exercising when you can because of the exhaustion I just mentioned. But for me I would try to walk an hour each day, and when I walked I would walk to get the blood pumping not stroll. Now most days I couldn't do an hour straight so i broke it up into two 30 min intervals. There were some days when I was done, I would again go back to bed and get a nap, but at least I was keeping my heart pumping and opening up my lungs. As an outpatient now I am still instructed to exercise, not in token that most people exercise, but nonetheless exercise. The biggest thing I have learnt going through this process with regards to exercise is to listen to your body. I used to be terrible at this, I think it came from my years of training for track and just pushing through things. But unless you are in top physical form you really have to listen to your body. I think this is why so many resolutions go unresolved. People start out adding exercise to life by pushing hard, not listening to their body and they get burnt out in a month.

Another important lesson I learnt in the hospital was the importance of relaxation. When I say this I don't mean the sitting in the recliner watching TV type (which happened to be my favorite type before this whole ordeal :) ) but I mean the quiet gaining inner peace type of relaxation. I used two main techniques for this because I wanted to relax both my body and mind. For relaxing my mind I used the very simple technique of doing lying meditation on a daily basis. For this you just lie down in a comfortable position and just shut your mind off by focusing only on your breathing. It is important to do this in a quiet place where there are no interruptions. Also don't be discouraged if you fall asleep. It is your body telling you that you don't have enough rest. That is the beautiful thing about this type of meditation as it allows your body to dictate which type of relaxation you are going to do, sleep or meditate :). The second type I used was more for my relaxing my body. It was very similar to the lying meditation except that instead of doing in complete silence, I listened to my favorite music. Again if you fall asleep don't fret it again means your body is telling you something. I would recommend everyone reading this blog find some time in their day to try one of these simple techniques. I believe the most important one is the silent meditation but if helps to start with music and move to silence as you learn the techniques. I have found this technique so important that I have signed up for a course at PMH designed to teach many techniques to learning the path to inner peace. If anyone needs help with learning some of the meditation techniques, just email me and we can discuss more. I think you will find that even just adding 30 minutes of this into your day will pay major dividends in your life, remember Stress Kills!

The next important routine you learn in the hospital is the importance of sleep. They recommend that you get 8 hours of sleep a day which I know many don't. Not I am not being much of an example, writing this so early but I have a bit of an excuse. The steroid they have me on doesn't let you sleep as much, plus I have lots of time to get naps in during the day to achieve my sleep number :) But in all seriousness sleep is extremely important. I learnt this not in the hospital but when I was diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea last summer. I couldn't believe all the health risk associated with poor sleep. It is a major leading cause of heart disease and stroke. I truly believe that the reason I got through my induction therapy as well as I did was because of my ability to get great sleep when I was sleeping due to my CPAP machine. I believed so strongly in this that I told my nurses that every patient should be using one, regardless of if they have sleep apnea or not. If you try my meditation technique it will teach you very quickly whether or not you are getting the quality sleep you body needs to perform. I would recommend everyone take this routine very seriously as it is proven to have a direct correlation to your health.

The final routine that was imparted on me was the importance of diet. Now like exercise this is a common resolution that starts off the year with a bang and usually fizzles. But there are some simple things that I have learnt along the way that really help. The first is learning to eat properly. I personally am huge advocate of weight watchers as it is based on the Canada Food Guide. I recommend anyone who wants to learn how to eat properly go on it. You can even go on it without the goal of losing weight. It just teaches and enforces good diet behaviours. I am so thankful that we used it at the beginning of the year because it is making my diabetic diet so much easier, because we know how to cook healthy (the only thing I had to learn and watch for was all the added sugars that are in our diet). The other major lesson I have learnt is the importance of eating on a regular schedule. If I have learnt anything going through this cancer process is our body likes to be very regulated, it likes its certain amount of sleep and it needs to eat on a regular schedule. Yesterday was the first time I missed a regular mealtime by as little as an hour and I was almost shaking. Now part of this is the diabetes I am sure, but it does shed some light into the importance of eating regularly!

Well those are the main lessons I learnt about developing a healthy dose of routine in my life while going through my cancer process. I hope each of you might get something out of this and can add some healthy routine into your own life. If anything I wanted to just make sure I documented all these tips so that if I have to go back into hospital for a stem cell transplant I can refer back and I will remember all the tips I learnt the first time around :)

Hope you all have a wonderful day, I am off to watch the sunrise!

Until tomorrow,

Aaron