September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

One of the services that we are proud to offer at Advantage Physical therapy is cancer rehabilitation. This can be done both during and after cancer treatments. Research has shown that regular physical activity is safe during cancer treatment and will help the person to improve strength, function, and their quality of life. In addition, physical therapy can provide a place to have a support system while they learn to improve their strength, flexibility, and range of motion.

How can Physical Therapy help?

Physical therapy is imperative during a cancer diagnosis. As therapists, our goal is to preserve a patient’s quality of life, design ways to maintain goals that they love, and learn ways to navigate the disease to make the process easier. This can come in many forms: learning how to walk following an amputation, strengthening musculature around joints involved, improving cardiovascular strength to combat fatigue, and improve and maintain balance, just to name a few. One of the most important things that physical therapy allows for is to help improve self-esteem as well as mental and emotional well-being for the individual. By setting goals, it allows the person to work towards something, something that was normal before their life suddenly changed.

Meet Mike

Mike Reing is our lead therapist with oncology rehab, having worked with this population for over 17 years. In addition, he is affiliated with the Children’s National Medical Center where he is part of the clinical team in both the Late Effects Clinic and the Neuro-Oncology Clinic.

Interviews

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness month. In honor of this month, we would like to bring forth several interviews that Mike has participated in that speaks on this subject.

• Choose PT radio interview: Childhood Cancer and Physical Therapy.
  • This interview is a conversation with Roya Giordano about her 13-year-old son Mathias who was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in his right leg. During the interview she talks about how their family braved fighting childhood cancer and how working with his physical therapist Mike Reing helped to preserve his quality of life and allowed him to be a kid again.

• Survior.net: We Still Don’t Know How to Handle Teens with Cancer.
  • This is an article that describes the challenges teens face after receiving a cancer diagnosis. Being a teenager is hard enough at times. After a diagnosis, new challenges arrive and the independence they are trying to seek is taken from them. Read this article for more information as well as several resources if this is a similar situation that you are experiencing.

Going forward

When recieving a cancer diagnosis, many aspects of your life quickly change. Physical therapy can help. Give us a call if your or a loved one are going through something similar and lets see how we can help you

Tags

oncology, cancer, physical therapy, childhood cancer, falls church

Author

Alana Hamilton Alana Hamilton is a physical therapist at Advantage Physical Therapy in Falls Church, Virginia. She is a proud Hokie from Virginia Tech with a major in Biology and a minor in psychology and sociology. Following graduation, she immediately got her doctorate in Physical Therapy from Radford University. She is an avid fan of Pilates, running, and hiking. On the weekends, she can be found hanging out with her family and baby as well as doing Spartan races with her old physical therapy classmates and friends. She is a big believer that during rehabilitation, "Motion is the Lotion" and that staying active is key to remaining healthy.