Lymphedema -- Another "For-the-Rest-of-Your-Life" Thing...

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

Once the surgery was over and the “main” healing begun, we talked with my wife’s cancer care team and they introduced us to lymphedema.

First of all, “What is lymphedema?”

Let’s begin with an overview of the body system affected by this. Lymph is a clear fluid that lies in between the cells of the body. It’s there to feed the cells and to carry away waste. It comes from the blood itself and (to put it as simply as possible), “leaks” out of the tiny vessels that carry blood. It leave the red blood cells behind and if it were not cleared out, it would cause a massive amount of swelling.

Another system of vessels call the lymphatic system, “vaccuums up” that lymph and carries it back to the heart.

HOWEVER, where the circulatory system as the heart to push the blood around, the lymphatic system HAS NO HEART!

The only way to lymph can move around is by you and I moving. The movement of our muscles presses the lymph into the collection spots called the lymph nodes. These nodes are a gathered at very specific points in our bodies – the places where we move the most, the joints. Behind the knees, in the groin, the elbows, the armpits, the neck is where you’ll find large clusters of nodes. In addition you can find nodes in the lungs, underneath the chest muscles, along the spine as well as numerous other places in the body.

These nodes not only collect lymph to pass it back to the heart, they are also places where white blood cells made in the bone marrow, thymus, spleen and tonsils are gathered to be redistributed through the bloodstream to fight disease in the body.

The nodes are vital in moving the lymph fluid around and when some are removed during a mastectomy, the ease with which lymph can be moved is weakened. Even though there are still nodes under the muscles and in places besides the nodes – and so removal doesn’t instantly STOP the movement of lymph – it does reduce how much lymph can be moved around.

You probably already know that white blood cells fight disease. They also fight infections as well. When you get a cut or have surgery, white blood cells are moved by the body through the blood stream to the wound and often times leave the bloodstream to fight the infection. Once the infection is past, the white blood cells need to be transported back to the heart to go back into the bloodstream again.

When nodes are removed through surgery (or other damage or illness), the process takes much longer to “clear out” the white blood cells and the other extra fluid that the wound or damage caused. Because blood never stops flowing at its regular rate, fluid is still NORMALLY leaking out between cells. When you add the normal fluid leakage to the extra fluid and white blood cells from an infection, you get too much fluid in one place. This is called lymphedema (lymph of course, is what we’ve been talking about here; “edema” is a Greek word that means “to swell”).

The second question is: “What can I do about it?”

Lymphedema is treated by pushing the extra fluid back to where it belongs by helping the muscles and lymph nodes that are missing. Often this involves using massage as well as a compression garment: “The most common treatments for lymphedema are a combination of manual compression lymphatic massage, compression garments or bandaging.” Regular exercise is also helpful (see last week’s article on exercise: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2012/01/10-exercise-hints-for-cancer-folk-and.html for some pointers!)

This is very straightforward, does not appear in any of the reading I did to be something to PANIC about…it does however require an awareness of what’s happening in your body and how to deal with it!

Image: http://s2.hubimg.com/u/3967945_f260.jpg