Jennifer Marie J. Yang, MD

July, 2023 marked my first major trip after breast cancer diagnosis and treatment from the Philippines to the United States of America. This is also my first major trip post-pandemic. It is a trip I have made many, many times before the COVID-19 pandemic… but this blog post is not going to dwell on pre-pandemic vs. post-pandemic stuff. There’s enough out there on the internet detailing those changes!

This trip from Manila to New York was primarily to attend (and speak at) the Performing Arts Medicine Association 41st International Symposium from July 6-9. I built an entire vacation around it in order to make the trans-Pacific trip worth my while. I like to say the trip was more for seeing people (most of whom I have not seen since before the pandemic), rather than being touristy. There were some touristy bits thrown in but they were not the primary reason for traveling.

Here are my takeaways from the 3-week, cross-country trip (New York to Los Angeles, with stops in Washington, D.C. and Dallas):

1. Learning from my experience with travel-related lymphedema during a trip to Singapore, I wore a compression sleeve on my left arm during all the flights – the short-haul as well as the long-haul trans-Pacific ones. I put it on right after boarding. Since the ambient temperature on the plane was pretty cool, the sweater I wore covered the sleeve nicely. I had to take extra care with handwashing though, since I didn’t want to get the sleeve wet. The sleeve worked, I did not have lymphedema this time around.
2. Compared to previous travels, I needed more time to bounce back to “normal”. There was more post-travel fatigue, jet lag and a prolonged recovery time with this trip. Was it the cancer? The surgical menopause? Plain old aging? Methinks it’s all of the above – all sorts of changes in my body in the last year or so.
3. I am grateful for everyone’s kindness and hospitality during the trip, especially during the last leg in which I developed tendinitis in my right foot (unrelated to cancer but very much related to overuse from driving in Dallas). It was so bad that I canceled the rental car in Los Angeles, hobbled around with a cane, and needed wheelchair assistance at the airports on the way home. In retrospect, this saved me from driving in Los Angeles – which is probably a good thing!