To survive the long-term battle against cancer, I started getting massages once a week. I was told that muscle training is good for cancer and that it is better to move your body, so I thought I would continue my daily muscle training and playing soccer as before, but in fact until last year I had never been able to play soccer for an entire year, and I was always in a state where I had problems with my legs or back somewhere and was unable to play for several months. Playing soccer after the age of 60 is a big burden on the body. Till last year, I could have simply rested for that period, but since I am doing muscle training and soccer as part of my cancer prevention measures, I wanted to avoid being unable to move for several months at all costs, so I started getting massages once a week from a sports massage specialist who is also a tennis trainer. Also, I am not alone in my fight against cancer, and it is very important that my wife stays healthy, so we started getting massages once a week together. I decided not to spend money on alternative treatments or Chinese medicine for a while, but instead to invest here, and now I can sleep soundly at night without any pain in my legs and hips even after playing several games of soccer. My wife’s severe neck and shoulder pain seems to have eased, and we are both able to adjust our condition to fight cancer.
Another investments I’m planning is to go on a trip with my wife. After the surgery, I decided to visit all 47 prefectures in Japan with my wife and take a dip in the hot springs there. Since I’ve been working overseas for over a decade since my mid-40s, I decided to visit parts of Japan that I’ve never been to before with my wife. Since I’m still working, I can’t take long holidays, so I’ll be taking short trips on the weekends, but I’d like to visit all 47 prefectures over the course of a few years.
I visited Kumamoto at the beginning of September. I visited Mount Aso, Kurokawa Onsen, and Takachiho Gorge, and thoroughly enjoyed the magnificent nature of Aso. The magnificent scenery of Mount Aso was of course amazing, but a short stop also brought me to several surprisingly beautiful waterfalls, and at Kurokawa Onsen I was able to spend a relaxing time in an open-air bath where I could hear the babbling of a small stream.
At the beginning of September, I started the second course of anticancer drugs and I started to feel a slight numbness in my feet. A slight numbness in the toes of both feet. It didn’t affect my daily life at all, so I didn’t think much of it, but after about two weeks, I started to feel pain in the big toe of my right foot. When I put my foot on the ground, it hurt so much that I walked in an unnatural way, so I took painkiller and the pain went away in a few days, but I didn’t want the pain to continue. When I consulted with Dr. I at the time of my diagnosis, he said that the pain in only one foot is not a side effect of the chemotherapy. The numbness and pain that are side effects of chemotherapy seem to occur in both feet at the same time. Thinking about it carefully, I remembered that the pain in my right big toe felt similar to the pain of gout, and looking back at the results of my past blood tests, I saw that my uric acid level had been high for a few weeks. I had abstained from alcohol for a year, but started drinking in August, and started playing soccer in September, which seemed to have caused me to develop a slight gout. I was relieved to find out that the pain in my foot was not a side effect of the chemotherapy.
When I told the trainer who was giving me a massage that my feet were numb as a side effect of the chemotherapy, she said that the soles of my feet had become stiff. She said that warming my feet, massaging the soles of my feet, and stretching them would soften the soles and ease the numbness. In my case, the thing I’m most afraid of is being unable to exercise because of numbness in my hands and feet, so I want to massage and stretch my feet every day to prevent numbness.
The heatwaves are over and it’s September, so soccer is back on. There are two games left in the league, which features players in their 60s. At the moment, our team is in the second division, and if we win all of our remaining games we can play in a relegation match to the first division, but if we lose all of our remaining games we’ll be relegated to the third division, and we won our September game with a comfortable 4-1 victory!! Thanks to the daily training, my body has become much firmer and I can move around more nimbly, so I’m in great form with one goal and one assist. Besides me, there are two other cancer survivors on my team, one of whom is still undergoing Opdivo treatment, but is happy that we can still enjoy playing soccer even while undergoing cancer treatment.
After completing two courses of anticancer drug treatments, a blood test showed that the tumor marker CA19-9 had dropped to 61. The shadow of my liver shown on the CT scan had also decreased significantly since the beginning of August, and so far it seems that the anticancer drugs and daily physical activity are keeping the cancer in check.