And briefly...
Dragons Abreast Australia is a registered charity which helps breast cancer patients during their recovery from treatment. Happily a large percentage of individuals survive breast cancer these days but the transition from patients back into a full and active life is often difficult. Our organisation is a highly effective element in the ongoing post-treatment management of breast cancer patients, delivering significant physical and psycho-social benefits.
With over 40 member groups all around the country Dragons Abreast Australia’s programs continue to assist thousands of individuals to regain full and active lives despite their diagnosis of breast cancer. In so doing we are also actively raising awareness in the wider community of this insidious disease while at the same time providing a message of hope and inspiration to the newly diagnosed by demonstrating there is quality of life despite breast cancer.
Dragon boating is a highly social activity which unites you with the environment, rewards honest physical work, builds team spirit, develops fitness, promotes health and is enormous fun. Paddling dragon boats in the company of others who have traveled the same path reintroduces a wondrous normality back into life, helping to restore the confidence, the spark and the sense of adventure needed to encourage a full re-engagement with life while concurrently regaining and maintaining strength and fitness. Whilst not a support group, the friendships made in Dragons Abreast Australia provide a unique grass roots network of support, comfort, companionship and an overwhelming sense of not being alone on this journey.
We are a grassroots volunteer-run charity which serves an otherwise unmet need in the breast cancer community. We receive no government funding so the much-appreciated support of all participants in the Dragons Abreast Festival is critical to our ability to continue to reach out to those living with breast cancer.
All breast cancer survivors, regardless of age, gender, sporting ability or fitness are welcome to become members of Dragons Abreast. There are Dragons Abreast groups all around the country – and a call to 1 300 889 566 will find your nearest group.
It seems unbelievable now, but as recently as 1996, the prevailing medical wisdom worldwide was that women who’d had breast surgery should never participate in upper body exercise again - it was assumed this would cause and/or aggravate complications like lymphoedema (excessive swelling of the arm on the affected side).
A Canadian physician, Prof. Don McKenzie, decided to test this belief and started training a small team of breast cancer survivors to paddle dragon boats. He chose dragon boating because it is a challenging physical pursuit with significant demands on the upper body and with a high fun and collegiality component to help keep the group together until the end of the trial. His subsequent paper, published in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association, established that dragon boating post-breast cancer surgery does not impact on the incidence or severity of lymphoedema. Instead it improves the general strength, health and well-being of breast cancer survivors and so is highly appropriate in a patient’s ongoing management.