Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is used for people with all stages of breast cancer, and other types of cancer. Each treatment is specialized for each person’s situation. Chemotherapy is defined as any medicine or drug used to treat cancer. People use chemotherapy to shrink cancer before surgery and to also stop it from coming back after surgery. Chemotherapy is used to stop or slow down the growth of cancer cells. Chemotherapy.com refers to it as a systemic therapy. systemic therapy is a cancer treatment that affects cells all throughout the body. A treatment is given over weeks or months. There are different cycles that you go through when taking chemo treatment. Therapy also has periods of time that you need to rest because the therapy can kill normal cells as well. Even though the treatment can affect the growing cancer cells it can also damage other healthy cells. These conditions are known as the side effects. A loss of white blood cells, neutropenia, can cause for your body to get an infection. Having a low red blood cell count may lead to Anemia. Anemia causes fatigue, chest pains, and other symptoms. A low count in platelets, thrombocytopenia, may cause bruising and bleeding. 
Some side effects of chemo are damaged cells in the heart, kidney, bladder, lungs and nervous system. Not every person who takes chemo has side effects. The harshness of varies from person to person. Side effects don't last that long, but there are cases where they last for several years. Certain types of this treatment can cause a later reoccurrence of cancer in later years. Most commons side effects are fatigue, hair loss, and infections. Chemo can cause alopecia which is the loss of hair. Chemo may cause nausea as well. Chemo is given to patients in different ways. Chemo, when given as an injection, can be given by a shot under the skin, directly into a muscle, or directly into a vein. 
These methods are called Subcutaneous (SQ), Intramuscular (IM), and Intravenous (IV). Chemo is also given by the mouth, rubbing a cream into the skin, and etc. Chemo can be a single medication or a combination, or cocktail, that has a variety of delivering. Chemo has been proven to efficiently do its purpose. Chemo is also used to prepare you for different surgeries that you may have in the future. Procedures such as bone marrow disease and immune system disorders use chemotherapy before the procedure. In the later stages of cancer it helps patients relax and gives pain relief.
A condition in which there is an abnormally low number of platelets (thrombocytes) circulating in the blood. Excessive bleeding may occur if the platelet count is very low.
Wow Sage I never knew that there was different ways of Chemo treatment. It can be given by an injection, a single or cocktail of medication, and rubbing cream. The rubbing cream Chemo I think is very strange considering all the other more medical sounding options. I also find it interesting that Chemo is used to prepare a patient for future surgeries and in the later towards the end of treatment it calms and relives the patient of pain.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Sage! I read your post and thought that it was interesting and informative. This was actually very personal for me, because I watched my grandmother go through this treatment. My grandmother is in great health now and I am a proponent for this treatment. I have a question about your opinion on the future of chemotherapy. Do you think that in coming years that chemotherapy will continue to be the leading cancer treatment, or do you think that a safer alternative will arise?
ReplyDeleteThank you Mack. I do believe that chemotherapy will be the leading treatment for a long time, but we also have to remember that science is advancing every single day. I do believe that there will be a new treatment that will be less harmful to the human body. Science is always evolving and there will be something out there that will take its place. I am also very glad that you grandmother is doing swell.
DeleteGreat stuff, Sage! Before reading this post, I understood that chemotheraphy was one way to combat cancer, but I didn't exactly know why. It's interesting to believe that chemotherapy slows down the growth of cancer cells. Although chemotherapy is a good treatment for cancer, I find it high risk high reward, due to the side effects. I continued to do more research on new cancer treatments, and I found out about molecularly targeted therapy. This new mode of therapy consists of drugs designed to attack and kill only the cancer cells of a specific type of cancer. If you want to read more about this treatment you can read it here: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/DrJohnson/story?id=117508&page=1
ReplyDeleteThanks my dude for the rad blog!
When I was reading this post you mention that "Not every person who takes chemo has side effects" so I was wondering if doctor are able to predict in advance the chance that a patient will experience side effects after undergoing the treatment? The second question I have is why does doctor use Chemotherapy before conducting the surgeries to treat bone narrow disease and immune system disorder? The reason why I don't understand why doctor would use Chemotherapy, which is a therapy use to treat cancer to help treat bone narrow disease and immune system disorder.
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DeleteTo answer your first question, Scientist are coming up with new drug combinations so that people will have fewer side effects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=83&v=y88T-NxNjo8. This video explains some of the ways that they are trying to reduce the side effects. This link talks about the prevention of the side effects and who will most likely get them.
DeleteTo answer your second question, Chemo is used in bone marrow disease for a bone marrow stem cell treatment and it may be used for immune system disorders. IN immune system disorders doses much lower than those used to treat cancer can be used to help disorders in which the body’s immune system attacks healthy cells, like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis.
DeleteThis was honestly very educational. I feel like I heard about chemotherapy alot, but I never really knew much about it. I actually thought they blasted particles or something through a tube at the spot of cancer before reading this. Alot of people think there are alternative methods to treating cancer and there has been quite a bit of controversy surrounding whether or not to use chemotherapy. While some people have used it with great results, others have had their health rapidly deteriorate after the first stage; some used alternative treatments and found success while others tried alternative treatments and lost the fight to cancer. What do you think about it? There seems to be an unpredictable risk to every treatment.
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