Opinion | Breast cancer blog: Goodbye chlorine as my lumpectomy forces drastic change

The body is stubborn and still gets up like clockwork at 6:30am to swim. Not today and not this season, however. Swimming, my passion and a love, is out and a search for a replacement sport is in.

As I’ve learned from my many Google searches and my doctors, surgery and radiation and chemo don’t mix well with chlorine, especially the public pools in Hong Kong.

“A high risk of infection, you don’t want to make things worse” they say. But I continue to Google all of the alternatives to public pool swimming: how about rivers, lakes, ponds? What if I went to a five star hotel or bought my own infinity pool? The doctors are stern and shake their heads.

I finally give up. The aunt reminds me that I have more important things to think about like treatment, getting better and there is one word that no one mentions, not even me: survival. Because cancer isn’t like a broken leg, even after the lump has been removed, the treatment is all about upping the chances that the rogue cells won’t return.

The early bird swim workouts have been replaced by physical therapy and the attempt to get the left arm to gain mobility post lumpectomy. I’ve been obediently doing the exercises in my new little breast cancer book that the Hong Kong Breast Cancer Foundation gave me. Good news, it’s getting there.

And I’ve been looking for the new sweetheart sport while greatly missing the old one. My wide-ranging Google searches have included “leg-centric sports”, “best sports for breast cancer patients” and “best sports for cancer”. There’s speed skating, badminton, soccer (although high impact), and there’s good old walking although the sticky weather is yet another hurdle.