Many people living with cancer, and especially those living with lung cancer, experience mild to extreme fatigue.

Everyone has experienced being tired, and expects this feeling will go away after a good night's sleep. Fatigue is an excessive feeling of tiredness that may not be relieved by extra amounts of sleep or rest. Fatigue may lead to difficulty in performing everyday tasks, even simple self-care tasks such as bathing and eating.

If you are feeling fatigued, it is important to talk to your doctor right away because fatigue is treatable and controllable.

Causes of fatigue:

Several things may be causing your fatigue:

• Emotional stress
• A diet without sufficient iron
• Changes in your daily routine
• Treatment for the disease
• The loss of lung function due to the disease
• In addition, a condition called anemia has been linked to feelings of fatigue in cancer patients

Anemia occurs when the number of red blood cells (RBC) in the body decreases. Red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs throughout your body, a process that is crucial to maintaining a normal energy level. Due to the disease or treatment for the disease, your RBC level may decrease and your body tissues may not be getting enough oxygen, which leads to feeling fatigued.

Treatments for anemia:

• Mild anemia, resulting from a lack of iron in the diet, can be improved by adding supplemental iron to the diet
• Severe anemia is treatable through methods such as blood transfusions. However, this method has risks such as allergic reactions, fevers, chills, and headaches. It may also be inconvenient and time-consuming
• Another way to treat anemia is with Epoetin alfa, a synthetic version of the human hormone erythropoietin, which stimulates your bone marrow to produce red blood cells. This therapy may or may not be combined with oral or intravenous iron as a dietary supplement. Epoetin alfa is given by injection and does carry the risk of side effects

Talk with your physician to determine if anemia is the cause of or a factor in your fatigue. If so you may want to ask if Epoetin alfa would be an appropriate therapy.

Strategies to help control your fatigue:

• Reassess your daily goals to make them realistic and reachable
• Keep an activities journal and note your energy and fatigue levels at different times of day and with different activities. Finding patterns may help you to plan your day to minimize those activities that fatigue you the most
• Pace yourself
• Get plenty of rest, but don't overdo it; short periods of rest are best
• Ask for help with tasks when you need it
• Eat well and drink plenty of fluids
• Talk with your doctor about your feelings of fatigue. You can be helped