When someone is facing a serious illness such as cancer, which for many people brings up feelings of fear around it being a life and death matter, being concerned about your body image may be considered frivolous, unnecessarily vain or not relevant. Patients can be told just to be grateful they are alive and not to be worried about other issues.

Far from being vain or shallow however, this whole area of body image comes down to four important core issues that are really important for everyone and no less important for cancer patients.

Fatigue is a huge part of navigating cancer treatment as nearly every type of treatment has fatigue as a side effect. Knowing how to manage it is a challenge for many cancer patients. 

A student asked me recently: “How do you know whether to push yourself to exercise, or whether to rest? Shouldn’t we always just listen to our bodies?”

This is such an important question, especially when it comes to cancer-related fatigue.