Cancer hit longtime friends at the same time. Now they dance through recovery in Fort Worth

As the opening notes of Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose” plays over the speaker, Patti Crummel and Mitzi Gault begin their routine.

Crummel and Gault press through the balls of their feet and raise one heel at a time, then another, each holding onto a chair for balance.

Their exercise class takes place in a standard, mirror-covered room. But Crummel and Gault aren’t your stereotypical gym rats: Crummel, 71, and Gault, 68, are breast cancer patients in recovery. Their exercise class, one of several they attend on a weekly basis, is part of a wellness program offered to qualifying cancer patients at Texas Health Southwest Fort Worth.

Their participation in the program, and the benefits each woman has gained from it, demonstrate what more and more exercise scientists are finding in their research: That physical exertion should be encouraged, not avoided, for cancer patients grappling with the nausea and fatigue that typically accompany treatment.

“It seems counterintuitive,” said Kathleen Sturgeon, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Penn State University. An exhausted cancer patient might assume they “should rest and not move. And that’s actually the opposite of what we’d like to see happen.”

Programs like the one Crummel and Gault are participating in, named Nutrition Exercise and Attitude for Tomorrow, or NEAT, have been shown to have major impacts on how cancer patients feel during their treatment and recovery, Sturgeon said.

On a recent Tuesday, Crummel and Gault lifted weights, worked on their balance, and increased their heart rate in a strength and conditioning class that featured lots of Madonna on its playlist. The two women have been doing things together for a long time. Forty years ago, they met and became fast friends while working as nurses at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth. Over the years, their families spent time together at church, and Crummel and Gault were each other’s “chocolate buddies,” Crummel said.

Neither woman’s husband had a sweet tooth, so the pair would call each other when they wanted a chocolate shake or two scoops of rocky road.

“At Valentine’s I always get chocolate from her, cause I’m sure not going to get it from my husband,” Crummel joked.

When both women’s mothers were diagnosed with breast cancer, they leaned on each other.

And, in 2022, when both women were diagnosed with breast cancer within months of each other, they supported each other through treatment.

“We both just talked about it all the time, that we’d be there for each other no matter what happened,” Gault said.

Crummel and Gault began participating in the exercise and nutrition classes in Southwest Fort Worth earlier this year. Both women are in recovery.

The program is operated for Texas Health Resources by FX Well, a company that contracts with the hospital system to operate its gyms. The program is open to all qualifying cancer patients, including patients who are going through chemotherapy and radiation, said Jennifer Hunter, the vice president of strategy and growth for FX Well.

The program is available at gyms at Texas Health Resources campuses in Dallas and Hurst-Euless-Bedford, in addition to Southwest Fort Worth. If Texas Health Resources patients get a referral from their doctor, they get a free year of gym membership, including group classes, plus nutrition classes and courses on mindfulness. The nutrition classes are specifically designed for patients, and cover topics like how to nourish yourself when your nauseous from chemotherapy.

Through the program, Crummel and Gault have met other cancer patients, and have formed a community of peers who they can talk to about their shared experience, they said.

Sturgeon, who directs the Oncology Nutrition Exercise program at Penn State, said research has found that patients report less fatigue, anxiety, nausea and depression if they participate in exercise and nutrition programs during or after their treatment. For cancer-related fatigue in particular, she said, “it’s not something you can sleep your way out of.”

But nutrition and exercise could have an even greater impact on a cancer patient’s health, potentially even at the cellular level, Sturgeon said.

“I think where the field is moving is more related to the molecular side of things how exercise and nutrition and what we eat or how we move impacts the molecular biology of the tumor itself or risk of recurrence,“ she said

If clinical trials could show that exercise could, for example, decrease the rate of a cancer’s recurrence, doctors and health systems will have more evidence to include programs like NEAT as part of standard clinical care that could be reimbursed by insurance instead of an add on that’s only available for some patients, Sturgeon said.

How to get involved

▪ To learn more about the Nutrition, Exercise and Attitudes for Tomorrow program, please visit livefxwell.com/neat.html. The program is currently only available in three locations.

▪ To donate to the Texas Health Resources Foundation, which supports the NEAT program, you can donate here: texashealth.org/NEAT.

▪ To find more exercise classes designed for cancer patients, visit the Moving Through Cancer program directory online at bit.ly/movecancer.