What Is Chemotherapy? A Basic Overview of “Chemo”
© IndyDina with Mr. Wonderful
Chemotherapy
How does one write in an entertaining fashion about a subject as serious as Cancer and Chemotherapy? In this case, perhaps there is no real "entertainment", but only the opportunity to capture your attention with a frank relation of the facts associated with this main-stream medical cancer treatment.
Chemotherapy or "chemo" is a general term for treatment involving the use of chemicals to stop the growth or spread of cancer cells. Chemotherapy is considered a systemic treatment because the chemicals travel throughout the body to kill cancer cells, and because it can be introduced at a distance from the localized cancer site. Surgery and radiation therapy are considered local treatments, as they are site specific.
Chemo drugs can be taken before or after surgery, in combination with radiation therapy or as a stand-alone treatment. There are over 100 chemotherapy drugs, and different drugs are recommended for different cancers. Often, more than one drug is used. This is called "combination chemotherapy".
How It Works:
Chemotherapy targets fast growing cells, but in doing this fast-growing healthy cells can also damaged or destroyed. Areas which are commonly affected include the bone marrow, blood cells, hair follicles, the cells that line the mouth, cells lining the digestive tract/intestines, and cells lining the reproductive tract. This blanket targeting of cells and consequent cellular damage result in side effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, bruising/bleeding easily, weakness, infection, hair loss, sores in the mouth, and quite a lot more. Many of these side effects are temporary, with healthy cells eventually recovering after chemo and symptoms gradually abating over time.
Chemotherapy can be used to cure a specific type of cancer, control tumor growth when a cure may not be possible, shrink tumors before surgery or radiation therapy, for palliation, or to destroy any lingering microscopic cancer cells after surgery in order to prevent a reoccurrence.
When considering chemotherapy for any reason, patients should remember that they have the right to refuse this treatment and seek alternatives. There are proponents of traditional medicine, chemotherapy, alternative medicine, and traditional medicine's alternative treatments abounding, and it may be difficult to figure out what's true, what's false, and what's best for your situation.
Supporters of chemotherapy often say that there is no statistical information to support alternative treatments. Alternative medicine practitioners maintain that the established medical industry's rhetoric discredits other, possibly viable treatments in order to maintain medical primacy and to gain financially.
Perhaps the only "entertaining" thing about cancer is this debate.