When professional bodybuilder, Alexis Mercer, 23, noticed that her left hand was swelling and she was left incredibly short of breath after one of her workouts, she knew something was wrong.
She immediately went to see her doctor, but he just sent her home with antibiotics, saying that it was an infection.
But Mercer could sense that something wasn’t right, so she went to see another doctor for a second opinion.
When the results of her CT scan came out, Mercer’s instinct had been proven to be true. She was diagnosed with Stage 1 Hodgkin’s lymphoma, cancer of the lymphatic system. There was a mass growing in her chest, which was cutting off an artery, causing her to experience lack of breath and her arm to swell.
Mercer was immediately told that she would need 12 rounds of chemotherapy to combat the illness – and she would likely have to stop working out in order for her body to focus its energy on battling against cancer.
It was not an easy thing for Mercer to give up. “I've always loved the gym,” she said. “It's just a hobby that I love and it was really hard to not be able to do the workouts that I used to do. You know, I had these nice arms that were gone and I lost a lot of muscle.”
So Mercer made the decision then and there: She wouldn’t give up going to the gym. She would continue going, but modify all of her workouts – like reducing the number of weights she used – so she could still complete them.
Forcing herself through these workouts, albeit modified, over the first six rounds of chemotherapy were rough.
“But it was much better over the last six,” Mercer said brightly. Her body was beginning to regain its strength and she was able to keep at least some of the hard-earned muscles she’d built up over the years.
“I wanted to show that if I could do it, then there were other people going out there going through the same thing I was that could do it,” she explained of her incredibly difficult physical journey.
“We’re kicking cancer’s booty one workout at a time,” she wrote on her Instagram.
Mercer has since finished her 12 rounds of chemotherapy and her doctors are confident that with two more months of radiation treatment, she will be in remission.
