lymph – The Cancer Canary

Up Your Reps

One of the first posts on this blog, Get Ye a Morning Ritual, shared a great morning workout by Master Shi Heng Yi.

I’ve been doing this for over a year now and have recently upped my reps to 36. Master Yi uses the Ayurvedic numbers, so I’ve followed this pattern.

Really feeling it in my arms/shoulders and tops of my thighs. But yeah, it’s all good and I’m happy and thankful that I can do it and of course I feel better after I do.

Here’s the original workout:

The only problem with the 36 reps is that it takes a while, and I often lose count. My husband asks me a question, or the dog sees me standing still and gives me his signals for backyard, walkie time, or breakfast time… and so I pause, forget where I’m at in my count ….

So today, I did an 18-rep workout, and then I did it again for a total of 36 reps. I think this is gonna stick.

Whatever your health situation, this is a great way to get moving in the morning, and move that lymphatic system!

Sweat

You need to sweat. Every day. Sweat cleans out your systems and allows toxins to leave your body.

I live in a cold place, and sweat is hard to come by for about half the year. So once a month or so, I treat myself to a 30-minute sauna.

It feels wonderful.

I usually have to take a break halfway through, just open the door and let some heat out and room-temp air in.

The place I go to has private rooms, some quite large to accommodate multiple people or a wheelchair or walker.

There are also rooms with cold plunge tubs. I haven’t tried that yet. 🥶

A really nice feature of this sauna studio is that they give you a cold towel with a menthol/camphor oil in it to wipe down as you sweat. So refreshing!

The first time I went to the sauna, my daughter came with me, and we couldn’t get over how similar it was to driving in our old Subaru.

When we lived in Florida, we would sweat every day, whether we wanted to or not.

The Subaru had black leather interior. It would bake in the driveway or a parking lot… we’d need to drive somewhere, open the door and see heat and humidity rising visibly like vapors off a barbecue grill.

Good times, good times. 😉🚗

Morning Routine

I recently spoke with an old friend who had heard of my diagnosis through the grapevine. He asked if I was doing all the things… all the things a person does when they get a diagnosis like this. Yes, I replied.

But what are the things? Well, there’s a lot of ’em, so I’m breaking them down by the phase of a typical day.

Here’s Part 1: Morning Routine.

I’ve wavered in consistency lately in terms of my morning routine. Months of extra-snowy and cold winter, plus traveling & staying with family are just a couple of the reasons why. There’s also “couch inertia,” aka “warm blanket in front of the fire,” inertia.

Yeah, its a thing.

Here’s the morning routine I strive for (and often achieve):

Wake up between 6 and 7 am. I don’t use an alarm but seem to always wake up around this time.
Put on my dumb watch, which counts my steps and tells the time, but isn’t constantly sending updates to my phone.
Open the blinds & get a blast of natural light into the bedroom.
Brew some organic coffee, which I drink black.
Use filtered water, of course.
I add about a tablespoon of chaga to my coffee. Chaga is a mushroom product that has some really great health benefits.
A quick walk outside, usually my backyard. Put bare feet on the earth. This is called grounding, and there’s a wonderful documentary on YouTube called The Earthing Movie… check it out.
While I’m outside, I like to break pine needles and smell them. I feel that it wakes up a different part of my brain. In the summer, we have other aromatics like rosemary, basil, and lemon balm to choose from. But in winter, it’s pine.
Set my circadian rhythm by looking at the sun. We have mostly hazy sun here, and if you live in a very sunny place, this would be impossible. Still, our stomachs set their expectations based on this morning exposure to the sun. Read about it in the book The Oldest Cure in the World by Steve Hendricks.
I started doing this morning activation routine with Master Shi Heng Yi, and it was a great starting point. However, over time, I’ve added reps and hand weights and a few more exercises to make it a more challenging routine.
A shower with only yuka-approved soap, shampoo, and conditioner.
While showering, I do a lymphatic massage. This is based on lots of reading and videos by lymphatic specialists. A great resource is the Lymph Love Club, which you can follow on social media for lots of reminders and techniques. (Note: CLL is not only considered leukemia but also a form of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, so taking care of that system is important for me, especially to balance out my sedentary work.)
A cold blast at the end of the shower, based on the research of Wim Hof.
Out of the shower, I get dressed, walk the dog, and do chores — or hit the rebounder — with a goal of getting 2500 steps before settling down to my desk at 8:45 am.

Ok, that’s it for the wake-up routine. Tune in next time… 📻

Symptoms

In 2018, we moved from Florida to New York. A lot of things changed, from the water to the weather, the pollen, the food, the amount of sunlight, noise levels, stress levels … everything, really.

I started getting what I now call “6 hour colds” in the spring of 2019. I’d feel a tickle in my throat or cough or sneeze, go take a nap, and then wake up feeling fine. I wouldn’t get sick… not for more than 6 hours anyway. It was weird, but really, I didn’t think about it much. Who‘s going to complain about not getting sick?

I also started to notice that, after a lifetime of asthma, hay fever, and allergies, mine had gone away. In Florida, I could go through a jumbo box of Kleenex in a couple of days. In New York, my husband and son were having allergies, which they rarely had in Florida, and I wasn’t. Hmmm. Must be different pollen...

I mentioned earlier that I do some work for the American Lung Association, and a lot of it involves asthma training. I remember arguing over whether asthma was a chronic condition. I thought it wasn’t because, evidently, I had “outgrown” mine.

In early 2020, well, you know what happened. Covid! My family got it, but I didn’t. Hmm… I must be lucky, or maybe I’m one of those asymptomatic carriers.

In 2021, I went hiking with my kids at Letchworth Park, the “Grand Canyon of the East.” It’s a beautiful place, and you should definitely check it out if you get a chance. We parked at the upper falls and walked down steep stone stairs to the middle falls, maybe a distance of a mile or so, mostly stairways but some flat land, too. I was fine on the way down. Getting back to the car was a real challenge, though, because those stairs were steep!

I was getting winded very easily and had to stop a few times. I had never felt like that before. When we got back up to the car, I let my daughter drive. I was too shaky and lightheaded to do it. I recovered after a bit of rest and was fine.

Later, knowing that I needed to get some exercise and build up my stamina, I joined a gym and started doing zumba and yoga regularly. Those hour-long classes never took me to that place of exhaustion I felt at Letchworth.

There were other odd occurrences, and I don’t know if they were symptoms of CLL or not.

It seemed like my hair was thinning, but then again, I was going through menopause and that’s fairly typical.

I gained weight and had less energy in the evenings, but that sounded like menopause, too.

Sometimes, usually after walking up 2 flights of stairs, I would see blue spots. When it happened, I’d just drink a big glass of water. I had never been in an environment like this before, with the heater on 5+ months of the year and a potbelly stove in constant use. It made sense to chalk it up to simple dehydration.

I smelled different, not in a gross way, but just different, more acidic. It motivated me to exercise more and sweat more. I also started going to a sauna in the cold part of the year, approximately once a month.

My armpits were puffy, which could have been from the weight gain.

In December of 2022, I got a mammogram, which revealed an enlarged lymph node in one armpit. It was monitored with ultrasound a couple of times in 2023 and seemed to be slowly growing.

So we did a biopsy, which revealed cancer markers. Then, a battery of blood tests to confirm the diagnosis.

And here I am…

Lymphatic Massage

Scrolling thru social media a while back, I discovered this interesting way to move the lymphatic fluid around through massage.

I made up a routine based on what I was seeing, using 18 repetitions (it matches the morning activation exercises I’ve been doing and Ayurvedic tradition). I do it in the shower every morning! And I incorporate a cold blast!

This video explains it well:

My shower routine:

Get in and wash as usual (with soap and shampoo that get great scores on the Yuka app 👍).
After shampooing, begin at neck, and do 18 sweeping motions from ear to collarbone.
Next, 18 sweeping motions along each collarbone, towards center of body. Give each collarbone a few light taps at the end.
While one arm is over your head, 18 sweeping motions from center of ribcage (sternum) to armpit. Alternate beginning at the center of the ribcage with beginning at the waist and pushing up along your sides. Ladies, you can also check for any lumps or changes in that area.
Once you’ve done that, keep your arm raised over your head and sweep down from elbow to armpit. Put your thumb in the armpit at the end of each stroke. (Btw, armpits should feel like hollow pits. When I was getting diagnosed, mine were fat and puffy. Not good.)
18 circular sweeps of the stomach area. Pretend you are pooh bear rubbing his tum. Use a clockwise motion.
Around this time, I put in my hair conditioner, turn the water so it is cool, and get my head out of the reach of the spray.
Now it’s time for legs. Remember those spaghetti servers? Make your fingers look like those. I’ll put a photo at the bottom of this post.
18 strokes to the back of the leg using spaghetti fingers. I tend to sort of push a little. Move from ankle to back of knee.
18 strokes to the shin, moving again from ankle to knee.
9 to 18 pinches to just under the kneecap. There’s a pressure point there. It shouldn’t hurt. I’ll try to find a photo so you know how to position your hands.
Use both hands to encircle each leg just above the knee, and move up 18 times. Do both sides.
Lastly, do 18 presses to the pressure point around the aortas to the sides of the groin area.
Now turn the water as cold as you can handle and rinse out the conditioner.

Rebounding

CLL is considered both a leukemia and a lymphoma. (Yeah… I got a BOGO on cancer 😵‍💫?!?)

Having watched my mother and my sister-in-law battle breast cancer, I knew that the lymph system is often the pathway for a disease to spread / become metastatic.

However, with blood cancer, it’s everywhere already. There is no locus or tumor. The cancer circulates all the time.

There really is no pump or circulation process for lymphatic fluid, other than our own movement. Being a desk worker, I know I’ve been living in a dangerously sedentary way.

Things have been way too stagnant in my entire lymph system.

So I needed to find ways to move and stimulate my lymph system to circulate fluid… ways that would work during the long cold winters here in upstate NY… It’s a challenge!

So now I’m bringing in more movement and sweat to my days. I do the morning activation routine, a daily lymphatic massage (usually in the shower), and use the rebounder here and there throughout the day.

Here’s why:

It’s great with music or when watching a TV show with my husband (though I think it gets on his nerves a bit… 🤪)