How Spectrum Rehabilitation Helped Me Recover

from Cancer

-A testimonial by Jeffrey H.-

January 22, 2008

Before Cancer: Before being diagnosed with a rare form of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma I was in peak health. I was an athletic 24 year old who enjoyed running, lifting weights, and playing many different sports. About 4 months before being diagnosed with cancer, I had won 4^th place in the 18-25 year old division at the annual South Padre Triathlon. As of early March of 2007 before my first symptoms appeared, I was in excellent shape with enough energy to put in a 10 hour day as a high school teacher and still exercise for an hour or two after work.

During and immediately following chemotherapy treatments: In order to save my life, I underwent 8 months of intensive chemotherapy. This meant spending a week at a time in the hospital, often getting toxic chemicals pumped into me 24 hours a day. After a week’s stay in the hospital I would have 2 or 3 weeks off to allow my blood counts to recover. Even though these weeks were supposed to be “recovery time,” I still had to undergo 2 spinal taps each 3 week cycle ( a grand total of 16 spinal taps). The chemotherapy and spinal taps hit me so hard that it was often difficult for me to sit-up for longer than 10 minutes or stand for longer than 2-3 minutes. At one point during my chemotherapy cycles, I had dropped from weighing 150 pounds (pure muscle) to 118 pounds and looked like a skeleton. By the time I had finished chemotherapy, I had gained back some weight due to a special diet (I was up to 130 pounds), but all the weight gain was flab. In the month following my last chemo treatment when I was pronounced “in remission,” I recovered to the point of being able to ride my bicycle for about 20 minutes before feeling like collapsing. I was extremely frustrated with my physical condition and progress was excruciatingly slow. Furthermore, I needed to return to work and my energy levels were making this difficult.

The benefits of working with Aaron Knutson and other experts at Spectrum Rehabilitation: I met with the staff at Spectrum Rehabilitation in mid-October of 2007 to see if they could help me. They immediately ran tests to measure my strength, flexibility, and balance (which were basically non-existent) as well as other diagnostic tests to measure how my cardiac, oxygen, and carbon dioxide levels fluctuated in response to mild exertion.  Based on the test results, they designed a specific program to help me regain strength, energy, endurance, flexibility and balance. After 8 weeks of starting my rehabilitation/training program, I had gained back 15 pounds of muscle (I weighed 145 pounds) and my flexibility, endurance, and balance had greatly improved. My energy levels also rebounded to the point where I could work a full day as a teacher and still have the energy to exercise. Not only did the Spectrum staff provide the expertise to help rehabilitate me through cardiovascular work, strength conditioning, and stretching, they also provided me with access to beneficial programs like yoga and h2o fitness classes. Upon completion of the program, they ran another series of tests that showed my significant physical gains. Having access to the expert staff and wonderful facilities at Spectrum Rehabilitation helped me recover not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally. I would recommend Spectrum Rehabilitation to anyone currently undergoing cancer treatments or who recently finished them. My only qualm about the whole process is that I did not contact Spectrum sooner in order to have benefitted from their program during my chemotherapy treatments. My results could have been even better!



Jeff's Results