From this New York Times article, Balancing Painful Swelling with a Desire to Exercise, come these quotes:
Some women living with lymphedema have managed to do repetitive upper-body exercise in a way that doesn't aggravate their symptoms.
And this quote:
In the last decade, Linda Miller, the director of the Breast Cancer Physical Therapy Center in Philadelphia, has found that patients who strengthen their arms controlled their lymphedema symptoms better than those who didn't lift weights. "For years, I was spitting in the wind," said Ms. Miller, a physical therapist. "This study is going to rock the lymphedema world."
And lastly:
The ordeal left Ms. Warren, 55, so devastated that she stopped lifting even the lightest weights. Her weakened upper body eventually became a problem. "Because I lost muscle tone," she said, "I kept hurting my arm." She now practices slow, progressive weight lifting, but she laments not being advised to do so earlier. If she had, Ms. Warren said, she might have avoided lymphedema or at least better managed her symptoms.
At Kelly Personal Training in Austin and at Ultimate Fitness in New Orleans we have had success working with recovering cancer patients. The recovery systems of these patients are fragile. They cannot stand long bouts of exercise. Our personal training sessions are short and designed to efficiently stimulate a change; we then give them plenty of time to recover.
The equipment we use is MedX medical rehab equipment that is more easily tolerated by the joints. We can restrict the range of motion to a pain-free range of motion, and we use controlled movements to minimize forces that could aggravate pre-existing conditions.
Lance Armstrong once said. “Before I just lived now I live strong”. The catch 22 is doing it without aggravating pre-existing conditions. As NYT article reports; it can be done.