Transcription:
Oncology Rehab

Melanie Cole (Host): For cancer patients and their loved ones, a lot of the focus is on treatments and outcomes and what’s going to happen during those treatments, but not everybody always thinks about the quality of life before, during, or after those treatments and how it can affect the person physically, mentally, cancer affects us as a whole. My guests to talk about oncology rehab today is Beth Schwendeman, she’s the Director of Outpatient Therapy Services, and Rob Moat, he’s an occupational therapist, and they’re both with Memorial Health System. So Beth, I’d like to start with you. Tell us about cancer rehab. What is it and who is it for?

Beth Schwendeman (Guest): Cancer rehab can be for any of our patients that have had cancer, whether it’s something they were able to catch early or late stage. Taking care of our patients and getting them back to function is the heart and soul of what we do, and it includes a diagnosis that can be geared towards speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, or any combination of the above to really look at what their limitations are and what’s preventing them from getting back to the things that they enjoy in life.

Host: So Rob, tell us above some of those benefits that can happen with rehab during cancer treatments, or even before and after, if you know you have cancer and you’re going to start treatments and you start going in to rehab. Beth mentioned speech therapy, and physical therapy, occupational therapy, what are some of the benefits? What are doing for them?

Rob Moat (Guest): Well a lot of what we do, especially with occupational therapists, just like Beth mentioned, dealing with function and return to function. So a patient, for example, who may be experiencing a really low energy level and experiencing fatigue, we might come up with a treatment plan that kind of works around their given abilities right now and maybe build up their tolerance to increase their activity level to get back to doing those certain things that are important to them that they’re not able to do right now because of that low fatigue level. So it’s certain things like that, that we can do to help them do those things that are important to them.

Host: Rob, sticking with you for a minute, when in the cancer treatment process do you recommend the people becoming involved in therapy and fitness activities and such? When is a good time to start exploring this option?

Rob: Just right away. As soon as they feel like that they can participate and have an energy level that they can do some activity. Any activity is better than no activity, and even if they are just getting up and doing a little bit at a time each day, that’s more of a benefit than just not doing anything at all.

Host: So then what activities, Beth, would they be involved in? I mean we’ve heard about lymphedema and lymphedema training for many, many years, but now many different cancers are involving themselves in this type of rehab and prehab. So what activities are you looking to? What are they doing?

Beth: One of the things that we’re really proud of with our department is that we can really offer something to every patient. So Rob is our certified lymphedema therapist. We have a wonderful multidisciplinary team of OTs, PTs, and speech therapists. So that if a patient just had some issues with conditioning, then they can do things with occupational therapy and physical therapy for exercise and to gradually work on endurance. Our occupational therapists and physical therapists can help with lymphedema no matter what stage it’s in. We’ve got speech therapists that can help with cognitive rehab as well as OT. So really we want patients to know that just because they survived the cancer, doesn’t mean that has to be their max functional level. There’s a whole world that we can open them up to, to really help them get back on their feet, anything from just decreased endurance, to lymphedema, to chemo brain, any of those things we can really give back to the patient and try to work with them to get them back as much function as possible.

Host: Rob, how long does this usually go on? Is it a program that maybe starts before treatment, goes on during treatment, and how long after treatment can somebody be involved in an oncology rehab program?

Rob: Sure when I typically see patients, it’s usually after they’ve gone through treatment, but I also see patients through when they’re receiving treatment, especially if it’s chemoradiation, chemo and radiation, so it’s not necessarily linear in that respect. So it really comes down to the oncologist that sees them and then when they send a referral to us, then we initiate that as soon as we can.

Host: And Beth, let’s talk about what it’s like for the patients, and as Rob mentioned, fatigue and all of these things that come into play when you’re dealing with cancer. There’s also a big mental factor that goes on. Speak about how you can help them, and treat them as the whole person, and they’re doing fitness activities, they’re doing occupational therapy, maybe speech and language therapy. How does this treat the whole person? How can you help them with that mental part of dealing with cancer?

Beth: Absolutely, there’s definitely a mental component that goes with this as well. It’s something that’s usually split their lives upside down and something they did not expect. One of the things that we really take pride in as well, is not only do we have that multidisciplinary piece or we have PT, OT, and speech along with driver’s rehab, but we also work really closely together and treat the patient as a whole, and that we get to spend patient time one on one. So we don’t group our patients together. Whenever someone comes in for an initial evaluation, we’ll sit down with them one on one for 45 minutes to an hour and really get to know them as a person, who they were before their diagnosis and what their hobbies are, and we want to be able to treat them holistically so they understand what their role is and what we can help them with and that this does not have to be something that labels them for life. We want to be able to get to the root of what are you struggling with, here’s what I can offer to help you and we really spend that one on one time with the patient to help them reach their goals, and we want the goals to be based around what they want out of life, not necessarily what it says in a textbook they should be able to do, but really drill down to what’s the root of who you are as a person and how can we help you get back to that?

Host: It’s certainly true, and it’s such an important part of that entire treatment plan to look to fitness and to occupational and physical therapy. These are so important for cancer patients. Rob, tell us – give us a story about a patient where you’ve seen a remarkable difference or where you’ve seen it really help somebody get through this type of treatment.

Rob: Absolutely, I’ll go back to a patient that we’ve dealt with that was suffering from – not suffering from – she had recovered from breast cancer, and her overall energy level had just not been optimal where she felt like it should be, but she was a very active person, a very artistic person and she really enjoyed being around others and she just had kind of limited herself to her home environment. We brought her in, and we would work with her on building up her activity tolerance. We would take her to the pool and we would do aquatic therapy with her to help establish a nice baseline level for her to really build her tolerance while she was out of the water and maneuvering out in the community. We had worked on developing – she had also had difficulties with trying new foods and eating because she just had no appetite and we really worked with trying to establish a plan for her to develop trying new foods and different types of foods and trying different things to add to foods to spice it up because she couldn’t taste anything. Things like that, just working on getting her out into the community. We would do gardening activities to also help build up that activity tolerance, but get into things she enjoyed. We would paint because she was very artistic, we would get out and we would paint, so we were also not only working on endurance, but we were doing things that were meaningful to her.

Host: Isn’t that really what it’s all about? Beth, how does somebody access the Memorial Health System’s cancer rehabilitation program? How do they get involved?

Beth: So the first thing that they want to do is talk to their physician, let them know that they’re interested in coming to outpatient therapy. Our main campus is in the Frontier Shopping Center behind Giant Eagle in the shopping center, that’s where we have PT, OT, speech and driver’s rehab, and then we also have a clinic in Belpre that offers physical therapy with the plan to eventually add occupational therapy there as well. So their physician would just send in a referral form for outpatient therapy services, and they can send that and write oncology rehab on it or anything specific they want us to address and then fax it to our Frontier office and they’ll be glad to call them and get it scheduled.

Host: So Rob, first last word to you. What would you like the listeners to take from this episode? As an occupational therapist dealing with cancer patients every day, what would you like them to know about the importance of oncology rehab to go along with whatever treatment that they’ve got going?

Rob: I think the biggest takeaway for your listeners is to know that they’re not alone and that something can be done to help them in their recovery, and whatever that is that is specific and important to them, that they are not alone in that journey and that there is something available to them no matter what that concern may be for that particular person.

Host: Certainly is true, and that really is what it’s all about. Beth, last word, what would you like them to know about the services that you offer at Memorial Health System, and why it’s so important that they seek out this type of health if they’ve been diagnosed with cancer?

Beth: I agree with Rob wholeheartedly. I think the thing I would want our listeners to know is that like Rob said, their not alone. We know that it’s hard for them as well as their family members because it’s not something they expected in life and we really want to be that support system for them, and we want to help drill down to where are you at in this process and here’s what we can do to help you and know that whatever their current functional level is, doesn’t have to be permanent. So I think that’s the biggest thing is to let them know that there are resources available and there are resources to address a lot of things that they may not think that therapy can address, but we really treat the patient as a whole and look at them as a person and not a diagnosis and that we’re here to help.

Host: What a great summary, Beth, thank you so much. Rob, thank you so much for joining us today and tell us about this very special program that you’re both involved in at Memorial Health System because it’s really important for cancer patients and their families to hear that there are options out there to help get them back involved in the community and back to feeling like maybe they used to feel before their diagnosis, so thank you so much again. You’re listening to Memorial Health Radio with Memorial Health System. For more information, please visit mhsystem.org, that’s mhsystem.org. I’m Melanie Cole, thanks for tuning in.