breast cancer, yoga, psychosocial services,
Searching for Calm in the Wake of Cancer - Alberta Cancer Board
Searching for Calm in the Wake of Cancer
Joanne Lozynsky was always a fit, active woman but she couldn’t move quickly enough to escape her breast cancer diagnosis - even though she tried. “Two and a half years ago when I got the news my way of dealing with it was to walk, walk, walk, run, run, run. I just sped up. And my mind was going 100 miles an hour.”
Reality caught up with a vengeance after her first chemotherapy treatment. Lozynsky came home, strapped on her sneakers and headed off to Bowness Park for a run. She collapsed when she got home.
Lozynsky had heard about the Alberta Cancer Board’s psychosocial services at an information meeting at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre. The yoga classes she signed up for, the retreats and the support of the program’s counselors, all add up to what she calls “the cutting edge of cancer treatment.”
Dr. Linda Carlson agrees Canada is ahead of the game in treating the psychological effects of cancer. Carlson has just returned with the award for Best New Investigator from the 8th World Congress of the International Psycho-oncology Society, a conference involving 1300 scientists from 52 countries. Canada is leading the world in psychosocial care and is generating tremendous interest from the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom
Carlson is part of a team helping people cope with the emotional impact of cancer. One area of focus is distress screening, what the psychosocial team is calling the “sixth vital sign; the first five are temperature, respiration, heartrate, blood pressure and pain. A survey three years ago showed that “there are very high levels of distress in cancer patients that are not being treated It seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?” The results also showed that half of the patients who were feeling stressed weren’t getting any treatment; one third did not know there was help available.
They embarked on a distress screening program that hasn’t been done anywhere else in the world. “The idea is that all new patients who come into the clinic will have their distress levels assessed; those who identify with problems will be personally referred to the appropriate services”, says Carlson. To date, no one has evaluated the services to see if they actually decrease stress levels. An on-line screening program is now in use at the lung clinic at the Holy Cross site and the psychosocial team is working on getting funding for a broad study that would include all new patients. Fatigue, insomnia, and loss of appetite are all big problems for cancer patients, and there are questions designed to act as a flag for suicide. The participants are reassessed every three months to see what their symptoms are and if they’ve changed. Eventually Carlson hopes the program will be adopted by all cancer centres in Canada.
But Carlson isn’t spending all her time designing studies and seeing patients. Her self-described “passion” involves yoga and meditation. Thursday afternoons find this doctor on a yoga mat leading a class for “graduates” – people like Lozynsky who’ve taken an eight week introductory program and still want to drop-in.
The Alberta Cancer Board has been offering these classes since 1996 and published “a real breakthrough” with psychologists from the Tom Baker Cancer Centre Michael Speca and Maureen Angen and social worker Eileen Goodey as co-investigators. This was the first published research to look at how yoga and meditation affect cancer patients. Their next study went beyond patients’ emotional states to look at immune functions such as stress hormones in the saliva and blood pressure. The results showed a drop in blood pressure, more normal levels of stress hormones, and less insomnia.
Lozynsky is still a regular participant in the drop-in class and credits the combination of yoga and meditation with helping her learn to “live with the uncertainty” of cancer.
She’s still moving awfully fast. She’s found “a sisterhood” in the dragon boats and is on the board of directors for organizing the races. She’s also working towards getting her physical trainers certification so she can help women her age – in their fifties and sixties – who need more encouragement to get and keep fit.
Lozynsky savours the community she’s found in her classes and the shared values around being aware of the inner person, living in the moment, and slowing down enough to enjoy life day by day.
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