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When the doctors declared Nancy Hewitt cancer free, she was too weak to open jars or slice bread. And she was on her own.

Her sole resource was an exercise pamphlet that recommended walking fingers up a wall like a spider and lifting a broom handle over her head.

"No one really tells you or helps you after you're done with treatment," she said.

It's a gap in the recovery process that Hewitt, 64, tried to remedy later as a way to give back to other survivors. It was a passionate effort that ended in disappointment. Despite a recent national push for cancer survivors to be active, exercise programs and support from foundations are scarce.

"Even though people are recognizing the need for post-surgical intervention, it's still not embraced," said Heather Leonard, founder of the Oregon-based Cancer Exercise Training Institute. "The focus is still on finding the cure, but people aren't dealing with the millions who are surviving cancer and need to improve their quality of life."

Exercise has always been important to Hewitt. Before breast cancer, she swam and lifted weights. After chemotherapy and surgery, she was physically depleted. Emotionally, she was coping with the loss of her breast.

Then she found Lisa Gulotta's movement class for cancer survivors at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center. Gulotta, a dancer, yoga teacher and personal trainer, had recently received her certification as a cancer exercise specialist from the Cancer Exercise Training Institute.

Throughout her 25 years of teaching classes, she wondered about students who left classes for cancer treatment. At a fitness conference, Gulotta heard of a course to teach personal trainers how to work with cancer survivors.

"I thought, 'There's a thread here,' " she said. "Maybe I need to understand more about what the body goes through when it's being diagnosed and treated for cancer and how I can help so these bodies who have been working out for years and have been happy and fit and structurally sound don't lose that, or how can I help them gain it back as quickly as possible."

The training involved comprehensive course work about 25 kinds of cancers, surgeries, treatments and side effects. Gulotta recertifies every two years as the institute updates its 330-page training manual with the latest medical information.

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Finding strength after cancer

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Home » Exercise Programs » Finding strength after cancer