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What Exactly Is Chemotherapy?

Chemotherapy is one of those words that everybody knows, but not many people truly understand. First, because there’s nothing quite like experiencing it, or watching someone you love experience chemotherapy to hammer home how terrible the treatment for cancer truly is. Secondly, because not many people truly understand how it works. Today, we’re going to life the cover on that and tell you what chemo is, and how it works.


How Cancer Develops


To understand chemotherapy, you need to understand how your body works, and what cancer works.


Body tissues are made of billions of individual cells. In the centre of each cell is a nucleus – the control centre of the cell, and chromosomes, which are made up of genes. As we grow, our cells split into two. Those 2 become 4, then 8 and so on. Once we’re fully grown our cells slow down and don’t divide as much – they only divide if they need to repair damage.  

In cancer, the cells keep on dividing, much quicker than normal cells, until they form a mass – otherwise known as a tumour. These tumours can invade nearby tissues and spread to other parts of the body and even form their own blood vessels, supplying them with oxygen, glucose and hormones to help them grow.


What is Chemotherapy?


Chemotherapy is the most common treatment for cancer. It uses anti-cancer drugs (called cytotoxic) to destroy the cancer cells. There are a few different types of chemotherapy drugs, and you might be given a combination of them depending on the type of cancer you have.


Chemotherapy is designed to target the cancer cells, but it also affects some of the healthy cells in your body. The healthy cells will usually recover from the damage, while the cancer cells can’t. But this is where a lot of the chemotherapy side-effects come from – the damage to healthy cells.


There are also other anti-cancer drugs available to treat cancer. For example, targeted therapies are directed at certain parts of the cancer cells and work differently from chemotherapy, and you may be offered this depending on your circumstances.


How Does it Work?


Chemotherapy drugs essentially kill the cancer. Most chemotherapy drugs are carried through your body in your blood, which means they can reach cancer cells anywhere in the body. Different types of chemo drug will work in different ways. This includes:


  • Damaging the part of the cells control centre that makes it divide.

  • Interrupt the chemical processes involved in cell division.

  • Damage the cells while they’re making copies of all their genes before they divide.

  • Damage cells at the point of division.


Since cancer cells divide much more often than normal cells, chemotherapy is much more likely to kill them, and much less likely to damage normal cells. Different types of cancer respond differently to different chemotherapy drugs, so most people are offered a combination. A small number of people are allergic to chemo drugs, and so you may be offered an alternative.


How’s it Given?


Chemotherapy can be given in a variety of different ways, depending on the type of cancer you have and your wider treatment plan. This will usually be discussed with your chemotherapy nurse. You can have chemotherapy:


  • By injection or drip directly into the vein

  • By mouth as tablets or capsules

  • By injection into the muscle or under the skin

  • By injection into the fluid around the spine and brain

  • Directly into a body cavity (for example, the bladder)

  • Directly to the skin as a cream (for some skin cancers)


Sometimes you might need a few different types of chemotherapy, or to take it in more than one way. No matter which method you have, it will be administered in a day unit or outpatient clinic, so that your treatment can be supervised.


Does Chemotherapy Side Effects?


Because chemotherapy drugs can attack the healthy cells in your body as well as the cancerous ones, there are usually side effects. This is especially true in some areas of the body that are more sensitive to chemo drugs, like cells in the bone marrow and the digestive system. Some side effects are more common than others, and you may have just one, a combination of a few or none at all. They can include:


  • Higher risk of infection

  • Increased bleeding and bruising

  • Anaemia

  • Thinning hair

  • Hair loss

  • Nausea

  • Diarrhoea

  • Constipation

  • Taste changes

  • Tiredness

  • Slow growing or brittle nails

  • Dry, discoloured skin

  • Tingling or numbness in your hands or feet

  • Dizziness

  • Headaches

  • Dehydration

  • Tinnitus

  • Reduced sex drive


Of course, the list of every single side effect ever recorded is much longer, but these are the most common side effects noted. All in all, chemo does have some pretty nasty side effects – but when you’re fighting a disease like cancer, sometimes that’s the only way.


How Effective is Chemotherapy?


Like a lot of things in life, the answer is usually ‘it depends’. It depends on the type of cancer you have, how advanced it is, and how your body responds to it. There are some types of cancer, like testicular cancer and Hodgkin Lymphoma, which usually respond very well to chemotherapy. Others, like triple-negative breast cancer, ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer can be more resistant to chemotherapy.


Even if your cancer can’t be cured, your doctor might still suggest chemotherapy for a number of reasons, like:


  • Shrinking the cancer

  • Relieving your symptoms

  • Give you a longer life by controlling your cancer


Your doctors and cancer nurses will be in constant communication with you about how you’re responding to chemotherapy, and what your next steps are.

Fighting cancer is a daunting and sometimes frightening journey, but we’ve always found that being informed about what’s happening helps take away some of that fear. If you ever need someone to talk to, or just need a break away from all of it, Jill’s Fundraising Journey is always here to help.

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