descriptions is daunting enough, the litany of side effects is scary indeed.
The following are the most common side effects of chemotherapy, depending on the type of cancer, the type of chemo drugs administered, and their dosages. Not every cancer patient will experience all of the side effects, but most will experience at least some of them.
Immune system depression is the first, most obvious, and most dangerous. The immune system is suppressed to the point where the body can be prey to illness and infections that would ordinarily be quite harmless. This is why doctors will tell chemo patients to avoid crowds, where they might come into contact with contagious potentially dangerous bacteria and viruses. For a healthy person to be in a room with someone who has a cold is no problem; for the chemo patient, it could mean days or weeks suffering the contracted cold—sometimes it might even result in a hospital stay.
Fatigue is the result of fighting both the cancer and the chemo. It is always mentioned in the literature of what to expect from chemotherapy treatment. In some cases, anemia will be detected and drugs will be prescribed to address it. Most cancer patients can be spotted for their tired and haggard looks, slow movements, and cloudy thinking—all of which are symptoms of fatigue. Most of the fatigue is due directly to the accumulation of toxins in the liver.
Hair loss occurs almost immediately after the first chemo treatment. It happens because the chemotherapy drugs go after all rapidly dividing cells, and hair follicles are among the fastest-growing cells in the body. This is a physical effect that has tremendous emotional and psychological counterparts. Almost all cancer patients report the shock they felt at first seeing all their hair gone, straining to recognize the person in the mirror.
Damage to other parts of the body is also a potential side effect of chemotherapy. An oncologist will be on the lookout for breakdowns in areas of the body that may not be contaminated with cancer, but are the result of the powerful work of the chemo. These areas include, but are not confined to, the heart, the liver, the kidneys, the inner ear (manifesting as imbalance), and the brain.
Chemo brain. On the subject of the brain, cancer patients on chemo will almost universally report fogginess in thinking, forgetting things, an inability to come up with the right word, and so on. These lapses are more than the ordinary brain stops-and-starts that are part of virtually everyone's experience. For a person receiving chemo treatments, this is part of the process and can be emotionally painful and perilous, especially when important prescribed medications are forgotten.
Nausea and vomiting are so common among those on chemo that they are usually the first things an oncologist will mention to a patient. Other gastrointestinal problems, including diarrhea and constipation, go with the territory. Sometimes, these become issues of huge proportions, causing rapid weight loss or weight gain, chronic indigestion and heartburn, malnutrition, dehydration, and other complications associated with the gastrointestinal system.
The Other Part of Healing
As we have seen, chemotherapy is only a part of the healing scenario for a cancer patient. Certainly, it is an essential element for those who have chosen a conventional route to treat cancer. But, while chemo is a powerful attacker of cancer cells, it is not a cure-all for the disease.
The other part of healing from cancer is the challenge of staying healthy through the span of chemo treatments and remaining in good health after those treatments have run their course. It is no small challenge for the cancer patient, particularly in the run-down physical and emotional state left in the wake of the chemo drugs.
What is required to stay healthy is, in the first place, a willingness to engage in the healing process. Many cancer patients simply turn their healing program over to their oncologist and assume that the doctor will take care of everything necessary to return to good health. This is the doctor-as-garage-mechanic attitude: I take my body into the shop, the doctor fixes it, and I go home. It is a mistake that could be fatal—and sometimes is literally that for thousands of people with cancer.
In our culture, we might even say that the role of the doctor has less to do with creating good health than in managing disease. We ask an oncologist to treat our cancer, but that does not automatically mean that we are asking the doctor to restore us to vibrant well-being. In fact, with our medical system of disease management (as opposed to health fostering), it actually would be presumptuous of us to expect more of our physicians than what they offer. And what they offer is considerable, if we want to eradicate cancer from the body.
Engaging the process of healing means that we do not rely on doctors alone to give us good health. They do their part by trying sincerely to rid the body of a rapidly growing disease. The rest is up to the cancer patient. This is not an easy thing to commit to, but unless one does, there can be no real healing.
So, what does the cancer patient do to fill in the blanks left by a system that goes only as far as managing the disease—in this case, destroying cancer and removing it from the body?
First, as I said earlier, is to decide to undertake one's own healing and not assume that a doctor or a nurse or a hospital staff member is going to do it; they won't because that is not what they do, it's not their job.
Next is to try to get as much information as possible—good, reliable, authoritative information—to form a structure for a healing program. I am writing this book to help provide just that.
Finally, a cancer patient will need to have a dedicated caregiver. This is so important that I am going to say more about it in a separate section that follows. All the good resolutions a person with cancer makes will come to naught without the help of someone who is physically and mentally on top of things.
The All-Important Caregiver
There is such a thing as “chemo brain,” or “chemo head.” Do a search on the Internet for these terms and thousands of sites will come up. Although this has been a problem for cancer patients since the dawn of chemotherapy, the issue has only recently been named. It is now recognized as something that happens to most patients in chemo treatment, and it is being studied to see how it might be dealt with medically.
I mentioned this above as one of the side effects of chemotherapy. But it bears repeating in discussing the role of the caregiver. There is a wide range of estimates of how many people get chemo brain. Some experts tell us that, among people who receive chemo, between 15% and 70% will experience brain symptoms. Others put the upper limit of the range at 50%. Working with these numbers, the risk of chemo brain can be higher than 1 out of 2 or as low as 1 in 6.
According to the American Cancer Society, patients with chemo brain experience these symptoms:
They forget things that they usually have no trouble recalling (memory lapses).
They have trouble concentrating (can't focus on what they're doing, have a short attention span, may “space out”).
They will have trouble remembering details like names, dates, and sometimes larger events.
There will be problems in multi-tasking, such as answering the phone while cooking, without losing track of one task (they are less able to do more than one thing at a time).
They take longer to finish things (disorganized, slower at thinking and processing).
There will be problems remembering common words (unable to find the right words to
