Chemotherapy is a word that carries strong connotations for all of us, and is second only perhaps to ‘cancer’ in the spine-chilling effect of hearing it. It is a treatment that summons up the image of suffering and the draining of energy, even while it helps the patient. But why is this treatment so very affecting to experience or to witness? And how does it actually work?
Very simply, chemotherapy is the use of medication to kill cancer cells. More specifically, it stops the growth of these cells by preventing them from dividing and growing. These medications can only achieve this by circulating in the body’s bloodstream and aggressively targeting growing cells. Of course, this process entails great destruction to healthy cells too, meaning that chemotherapy is a treatment that always makes you worse before you get better. Nearly all patients accept this pitfall to their wellbeing – because the medication used in chemotherapy is so very strong, it represents their best chance of recovering from cancer, whatever the cost to their temporary state of wellness.
Chemotherapy is a key treatment for almost every type of cancer, and might be incorporated in different sequences into your cancer care. Sometimes it is used as an adjuvant treatment, coming after the removal of a tumour or course of radiotherapy, in order to fight any remaining cancer cells. At other times, chemotherapy is a neo-adjuvant therapy, given before surgery in order to shrink a tumour. In other circumstances, such as those of leukaemia, lymphoma, recurrent cancer, or metastatic cancer, chemotherapy may be prescribed as a stand-alone treatment. Indeed, it may even be the only treatment that is possible in the case of non-targeted cancers.
The goal of chemotherapy can be to eliminate the cancer, or in more severe cases, simply to slow its progress. In the second instance, patients sometimes refuse to undergo the process, claiming that they want to prioritise their wellbeing in the time they have left. However, chemotherapy is a treatment that offers far more hope than suffering, and is responsible for giving the gift of life to millions. It is perhaps not surprising that one of the strongest medical treatments known to man also comes with such severe side effects. It is for every patient to evaluate its advantages for themselves, and for the medical research community to research the best possible methods of supporting this debilitating treatment.
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