Hey all, I’ve recently rededicated myself to lifting with the goal of finally getting a 405 deadlift by the end of the year (lightweight, I know), but I’ve been making great progress so far. Pulled 315x3 last week, which was a new PR for me.
Unfortunately, I was recently diagnosed with a recurrence of testicular cancer, this time in my abdomen (lymph node near left kidney), and will have to undergo radiation therapy (15 treatments, relatively low dose i was told). Anyone on here trained through radiation therapy and have any idea how much it will impact my training? How much easier should I be taking it on myself? The most the doc told me was “listen to your body”. What about lymphedema? Does that rule out DLs entirely cuz of the scraping on the legs?
I would not worry about these things ahead of time, but rather use a strategy for autoregulation (like RPE) to adjust training loads based on your readiness/performance on a given training day.
People seem to have a really distorted view of the risks and benefits at play in these sorts of situations. The benefits of continued exercise (particularly strength training) so far outweigh the risks (including things like lymphedema) that if it were me, I would not given them a second thought.
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Yeah, auto-regulation, and a willingness to adjust expectations will make the process easier. Just keep training…
Thank you so much for the response guys! I really appreciate the feedback. I’ll try RPE and continue training to the best of my capabilities.