Living with and beyond cancer
Fatigue or weakness with cancer
Having an illness like cancer can lead to excessive tiredness and fatigue. This fatigue may be from the body’s response to repairing itself from cancer, side effects of cancer treatments, or just needing time to recover emotionally from the experience of having had a serious illness.
Cancer-related fatigue can be a long-term condition, and some of the people we interviewed had to manage it along with their day to day lives. As Diane, who had breast cancer, described it, it was 'a result of the cancer that I just don’t have the energy I used to have’.
The extent to which fatigue affected the people we spoke to varied. Having long-term fatigue meant that some people couldn’t live the same kind of lives that they did before they had cancer.
One woman who completed her colorectal (bowel) cancer treatment 5 years before said she still experienced ‘down days’ when she didn't have the energy to leave her house.
Another woman found the ‘sheer tiredness’ brought on by her lung cancer and chemotherapy to be the worst long-term side effect of her illness and it was still stopping her from attending social occasions several years after treatment. She said she sometimes felt guilty about the effect this change had on her husband as they missed out on doing the things they used to.
Others found that they needed to scale back on participating in sporting activities or exercise. A 65-year-old man who was 6 years post-diagnosis of prostate cancer described how his lifestyle had changed, as he had to stop doing activities or sports which were 'too energetic’.
He felt that it was important to try to keep active but also to make time to rest. Travelling abroad to visit his daughter became difficult, as any long journey with heavy baggage was 'just too tiring' for him.
His lifestyle has changed after having prostate cancer. He needs to choose activities that are less 'energetic' and make time to rest.
His lifestyle has changed after having prostate cancer. He needs to choose activities that are less 'energetic' and make time to rest.
I was talking earlier about fatigue and I think that's one of the problems that might not be seen by a lot of people as being a problem. I mentioned that I'd had to stop doing some of the more energetic activities that I was used to doing and, as I say, the pain particularly started being troublesome in my back, lower back and both hips, and I found that I was having to start thinking, well I can't do this, I can't do that, what can I do? I started taking up more sedentary hobbies, things like painting, bowls, I thought, well I like playing some sort of sport so I thought, what can I do that's not too energetic, and I thought, well bowls isn't very energetic so I'll see if I can cope with that. And fortunately I have been able to, apart from the bad pain period that I had recently where I had to even give the bowls up. But by and large I've managed to do that and I think it's important that you do keep active, that you do keep doing something, because it's very easy just to start thinking, well I've got to, you know, do less and less and less, and I think it's a good thing if you keep, as I say, keep active, even if it's not as active as you used to be. So going for walks, keeping your joints supple is important even though very often you may not feel like it it's important to keep as active as you possibly can. And you do find that you do have to rest more, so I'll perhaps do something active for half of the day now and maybe rest the other half of the day, so in that way my lifestyle again has changed in that you acknowledge that you can't do as much as you used to be able to do. Things like going away on holiday and carrying heavy luggage becomes a problem I've found. I used to go on holidays to Singapore where one of my daughters lives, I can't do that anymore because the journey is far too tiring for me. I just can't cope with it.
Some people said it was difficult to know whether tiring more easily was also due to getting older, but they noticed that they had less stamina since their cancer treatment. A 50-year-old woman said, 'I have to pace myself a lot,…well it’s probably because I’m getting older but I definitely don’t have the stamina or energy that I used to have before.'.
A woman in her early 40’s who was 6 years past her ovarian cancer diagnosis said, 'when I’m tired, I just go to bed. I probably would have soldiered on and been up to all hours to do things. I don’t do that anymore'.
A man in his 50s who was diagnosed with lung cancer 5 years before said he found that he had to do his gardening in stages because of tiredness, so he 'does a small bit then has a sleep, then he does some more'.
Feeling more fatigued than normal made it harder for those people who were still working to get through the day. Louise, who was self-employed as a tour guide, described how a lack of energy made it difficult to motivate herself to get work done. She was still on hormonal therapy (tamoxifen and Arimidex) for her breast cancer and thought that this was the source of her tiredness.
Louise experiences a general tiredness and lack of motivation due to her breast cancer treatment. She really has to push herself to get things done.
Louise experiences a general tiredness and lack of motivation due to her breast cancer treatment. She really has to push herself to get things done.
Louise was not the only person to attribute feeling fatigued to the long-term effects of cancer treatments. Ann, who had leukaemia and was treated with a bone marrow transplant, described how she 'still gets very, very tired now’ even though she was 7 years post-transplant.
Diane felt that the main long-term tiredness that she experienced was due to radiotherapy treatment for her breast cancer which just ‘drained all of her energy’.
As well as fatigue, some people talked about weakness or having 'less physical strength’ as a result of surgery or radiotherapy for their cancer.
One woman who was 5 years post-diagnosis from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma described how she was ‘not the same person she used to be’ and had lost strength in her hands due to nerve damage from surgery. She found it difficult not being able to lift things, and had to deal with continuing pain and numbness in her hand at night time.
A man who had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma 13 years before used to work as a surveyor and felt that the biggest side-effect he had to manage was his ‘lack of strength’.
Thirteen years on from having non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, he feels that his ongoing lack of strength has been the biggest side effect.
Thirteen years on from having non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, he feels that his ongoing lack of strength has been the biggest side effect.
The biggest side effect, I suppose, is the lack of strength. We did a lot of renovation work on the various houses that we’ve owned, and I can remember the times when my sons used to come to me and say, “Dad, can you move this for me please?” Or, “Can you pick this up?” And I’d go along and pick up a flaming great big boulder, not thinking anything about it at all, I’d just do it, it was part of the renovation. But these days I actually have to wait until my sons come down, and say “Can you lift that for me please?” I can’t do it anymore and that is frustrating. I’ve tried swimming and moving weights around but I don’t seem to get any stronger, it’s just one of the things I think I have to accept that I can’t do it, you know. I’m still breathing, what have I got to be sorry for?
Last reviewed: January 2025.
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