This week's artwork was donated by Dathan, a pediatric cancer patient who received treatment at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia . I believe we must continually adapt to survive, and as life goes on, we can thrive on living. There's no reason we cannot maintain a fine quality of life during a life-threatening crisis. The diagnosis of cancer is not an automatic death warrant that demands that the patient and his family stop living. A study found that people participating in a fitness program were less depressed and anxious.
Physical fitness has a direct and positive impact on psychological health.
One should not rush into strenuous exercise, but it is not necessary to assume that some physical exercise is out of the question. By talking with your physician and possibly working with a physical therapist, a cancer patient often can do a great deal of exercise resulting in the improvement of both his emotional and physical condition. Among the breast cancer patients, those who were listless, apathetic and who withheld anger had more recurrences of cancer than patients who sought social and emotional support and expressed anger and other feelings. Among skin cancer patients, those who subsequently died of their disease or had it spread and worsen, were more likely to have been depressed, emotionally withdrawn and silently hostile than those who had no recurrence of the disease up to three years after surgery. The will to live is in itself an energy.