Jamie M.: This is MedTalk presented by HCA Midwest Health. I'm Jamie Monticelli. It is a new year and a new decade to focus on self care and our own precious wellbeing. Cancer survivors and those who have been recently diagnosed with the disease have a lot of challenges that affect every aspect of life. Today, Sami Mansfield of Sarah Cannon Cancer Institute at HCA Midwest Health is here to talk about the importance of taking care of your mind, body, and spirit when diagnosed with cancer and how to incorporate wellness into your life for quality of life. Jamie M.: Explain to me, first of all, what personal wellness is and when we talk about cancer, how that fits into that picture. Sami Mansfield: Awesome. So let's talk about personal wellness. So wellness by its simplest definition simply means it's an ongoing proactive way, steps to live your best life and it's individual. So everybody listening to this is going to have a very different definition of what that means, but I always tell people it changes and it evolves, but it's lifelong. It's lifelong but it's really important that they think about ways to live their best life, not someone else's, their best life. Jamie M.: Tell me what that includes. Sami Mansfield: So there's a lot of components to wellness. There's really seven categories. For our conversation today we're going to focus on our simplistic three, which is exercise or function, basic body movement, nutrition and mind body. Jamie M.: How do you work with patients to proactively help them take charge of their personal wellness? Sami Mansfield: Well, first of all, in the cancer world, cancer is synonymous with the word sickness, right? So the number one thing that we do is introduce the concept, which most people don't think about. Cancer is very reactive. It isn't about hi, welcome to living well. So we really talk to them about Hey, here's strategies that you can do no matter where you are in your cancer. Treatment, survivorship, living with advanced disease, it does not matter. Jamie M.: Let's talk about patients and their caregivers and why... It's interesting to me both, how they both benefit from wellness and why is the program at Sarah Cannon unique? Sami Mansfield: Absolutely. So caregivers are essential. Number one, caregivers have a really tough role. Their job is to support a patient, but they can't control what that patient does and they run this balance of how much do I push them? How much do I baby them? So we empower the caregiver to also take care of the patient with the same wellness principles, but also take care of themselves. So here at Sarah Cannon, we're so unique, we really encourage and we almost insist that the caregiver participate in those conversations because it's really about how cancer affects everybody for that patient to feel well and live well. Jamie M.: Can we talk specifics for a minute about what a person might do differently about... And I think for me this is more getting into the specifics of wellness. Some of those actions that you would do, hopefully you're doing them already, but that you would really, really be doing to take care of yourself after a cancer diagnosis. Sami Mansfield: Absolutely. The number one thing we tell people is get out of your chair. Exercise maybe sounds kind of out there, but it's evidence based. I mean, we have countless, hundreds of thousands of studies showing the exercise benefits. For most people, it's like, "Okay, how do I exercise when I'm having certain symptoms or side effects?" So we give them those specifics and we give them a plan that works for them. Jamie M.: Tell me about the difference between cancer survivorship and wellness. Sami Mansfield: Ah, good one. So wellness is, like I said, it's ongoing. For people, cancer survivorship means very different things. We know that cancer survivor means anyone diagnosed with a cancer. We know that anyone diagnosed with cancer still alive is a survivor but every person has a different definition of that kind of bucket. It's a little bit more surveillance. Wellness is, again, proactive. Wellness is everyday I do something. Today I'm going to drink water. Tomorrow I'm going to get out of my chair more. Today I might meditate or just breathe. So it's a very different, more holistic approach. Jamie M.: This has been MedTalk presented by HCA Midwest Health. I'm Jamie Monticelli.