Rehabilitative Care

At Mary Lanning Healthcare, our Cancer Rehabilitation program helps survivors regain their quality of life during their cancer journey, from the time of diagnosis to treatment and throughout recovery. Our rehabilitation professionals include physical therapists, occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists. We work closely with your physicians and other specialists to make sure we address your rehabilitative needs.

As cancer treatments continue to evolve, some common symptoms persist in the cancer population. Those symptoms can include:

• Balance or gait difficulties
• Bowel or bladder incontinence
• Cancer-related fatigue
• Chemotherapy-induced polyneuropathy
• Cognitive rehabilitation
• Deconditioning
• Lymphedema: upper extremity, lower extremity, head and neck
• Lymphatic cording
• Pain related to metastatic disease or prior cancer treatments
• Post-mastectomy pain syndrome
• Post-surgical cancer-related rehabilitation
• Radiation fibrosis
• Speech and swallowing issues
• Stiffness and joint restrictions
• Sexual dysfunction
• Weakness

Our cancer rehabilitation team has the training to address these symptoms and side effects. Your care and progress is our inspiration during your journey. Our team takes a personalized approach to understanding your needs and goals to get you back to a thriving life. From therapists providing services at the Morrison Cancer Center to our outpatient clinics in Hastings and Blue Hill, we are here to help you through your cancer journey.

Our goals for you are to:

• Improve strength, range of motion and endurance during and after treatment
• Manage the side effects of your cancer diagnosis or treatment
• Minimize your stress
• Help you to regain independence
• Decrease the chances of complications
• Alleviate pain and discomfort
• Help you adopt healthy habits that can lower your risk of cancer recurrence
• Optimize your physical and emotional well-being

Patients also benefit from specialty services designed to address the unique challenges associated with certain types of cancer. For example, breast cancer surgery is commonly associated with lymphedema, a complication that we can help to prevent and manage through lymphedema therapy during breast cancer rehabilitation. We also have specialists equipped to deal with the effects that oncology treatments may have on your bowel and bladder function.

You may see any or all these individuals depending on what your provider deems most appropriate.

• Physical therapist: Physical therapists help to reduce pain and improve movement difficulties caused by cancer treatment or surgery. Treatment may include scar tissue release, rebuilding muscle strength and improving overall endurance in a certain region impacted by cancer treatment or the entire body.
• Occupational therapist: Occupational therapists aim to increase overall functional abilities, including performing activities of daily living. Some areas of treatment include decreasing swelling (edema), reducing scar tissue and providing home exercise programs.
• Speech-language therapist: Speech-language therapists help increase one’s communication, thinking and swallowing by educating and training, to address changes from cancer-related surgeries and treatments. Treatments include teaching thinking and memory strategies, performing endoscopies to improve a patient’s ability to swallow and giving patients exercises to increase the quality of speaking and swallowing by addressing function of the face, mouth and throat.