Chemo Therapy - What Should Patients Expect?

Chemotherapy has been used for over a half century as a treatment for cancer. Extensive research and clinical trials over the past decades have made chemo therapy one of the safest and most trusted forms of cancer treatment. Chemo therapy has evolved over the years to become the most effective cancer treatment available. It is important for a patient to understand chemotherapy in order to know what to expect.

There are many ways which chemotherapy can be administered. These include receiving the drugs orally, through skin injections, muscle injections, intravenously, through a catheter, through a patient's spinal fluid, through the blood, or injected directly into the tumor. These and the other forms of delivering chemotherapy are determined through careful evaluations by the cancer care specialist.

Along with choosing how the chemotherapy will be administered, the cancer doctor must decide what type of drugs will be used. There is no one correct choice in choosing chemotherapy. Each treatment has different advantages and disadvantages, and there may be more than type of treatment that a cancer doctor will recommend. Treatment choices can also change as a patient's cancer evolves. There are many different types of chemo therapy that a cancer doctor may use:

Mustard gas derivatives
Ethylenimines
Alkylsulfonates
Hydrazines and Triazines
Nitrosureas
Metal salts
Plant Alkaloids
Antitumor Antibiotics
Antimetabolites
Topoisomerase inhibitors
Miscellaneous Antineoplastics

Cancer patients should expect some discomfort and pain following chemo therapy treatment. As with most drug therapies, chemotherapy drugs have side effects. Side effects of chemotherapy are direct results of the drug and have no bearing on the actual cancer. It is easy to confuse chemo side effects with cancer symptoms.

Different chemotherapy drugs have different side effects. Basically, chemotherapy damages the cancer cells that divide so parts of the body where normal cells divide frequently are often affected by chemotherapy. The most common areas on the body affected include: the mouth, intestines, skin, hair, bone marrow, and hair.

Although almost all cancer fighting drugs have side effects, not all patients will suffer from their side effects. A person may experience different degrees of side effects depending on the type of treatment, chemo therapy drugs, and what form of cancer the have.

Some of the factors involved in determining if a cancer patient will experience side effects include: the length of the chemo therapy, the patient's health, the amount chemo therapy used, how the drug is administered, and other drugs that may be used in the chemo therapy.

Serious short term side effects that can occur immediately or shortly after cancer treatment can include:

Shaking chills
Fever
Unusual cough or shortness of breath.
Nausea or vomiting
Diarrhea
Burning while urinating
Bleeding
Bruising
Mouth sores
Uncontrollable pain
Anemia
Changes in appetite
Fatigue
Hair loss
Infertility
Infection
Changes in the nervous system
Physical changes that can be seen in the hair or nails