Today, I had an appointment with a physical therapist well in advance of surgery because I wanted to establish a baseline before I lost anything more to chemo. The idea is that I get tips and exercises to do now, as long as I am feeling like I can do it, because once I have surgery, I'm going to have to scale way back. I'm actually meeting with an occupational therapist later this week who will have more information for me about the kinds of things I will need to do to recover from that surgery.
The main takeaways from today are that my activity level/balance/etc. are all good, and I need to keep going with it. Exercise will keep my energy up, exercises that prioritize stability and strength are going to be really important, and there's a lot of research that suggests that a certain amount of exercise (like 150 minutes a week at a moderate intensity) will not only make my experience right now easier, it'll also improve my outcomes and lower my risk of the cancer recurring. (Once again: "biking is great physically and even better if it's helping your psyche.")
I also learned that some of my posture stuff is less that ideal and I need to be more aware of positioning (specifically my right knee). They want me to come back once or twice before surgery so we can formulate an exercise plan that can not only focus on that strength and core element, but also can help stabilize my back. It's exciting!
As per usual, explaining that I "played too much Animal Crossing and gave myself tennis elbow" got a laugh, and the physical therapist suggested I mention this to the occupational therapist, because they'll have some exercises to suggest that will help me with my occasional videogame-related elbow pain.
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