Chemotherapy Overview

 
If you or someone you love has been told they have cancer, this can be a very scary thing. The treatments for cancer can also be very frightening. One of these is chemotherapy treatment. While it has been proven very helpful in treating cancer, it also comes with a host of risks and side effects on its own.

It’s important to understand how chemotherapy works and then you will see why it helps cancer patients but also why it causes the side effects that it does. Typically, chemotherapy works by interfering with the cancer cell’s ability to reproduce and grow, essentially, killing the cancer. 

Chemotherapy is a combination of medications used to specifically target a type of cancer in the body. It can be given in pill form, as an injection to muscle or fat tissues, in the form of an IV, directly into the body cavity or topically (applied to the skin). 

Chemotherapy drugs, no matter how they are administered, can impact all parts of the body, not just the cancer cells. This is what causes side effects in most people. Predicting and preparing for the side effects make the cancer treatment more bearable and easier to manage.

The side effects can vary depending on what type of chemotherapy you have but here are some common examples:

• fatigue, tiredness
• dry mouth and lips
• decreased appetite
• hair loss (reversible)
• nausea and vomiting
• rash and itching
• decrease in blood cell counts
• darkened skin coloration
• lung damage
• allergic reaction
• increased blood sugar
• confusion
• memory loss

These are just a few examples of the types of side effects that can come with chemotherapy. Often the patient will feel sicker on the therapy than they did with the cancer but this is a required process to treat the cancer and get better. Most of the side effects of chemotherapy are reversible once the treatment has ended.

Being prepared for chemotherapy and everything that you will need to go through will make it easier if the time comes in your cancer treatment that you must face this. It’s an unpleasant experience but one that has saved the lives of many cancer patients.

See our related article on cancer radiation treatment.