• Question: hey, what is inchemo therapy

    Asked by anon-297540 on 5 Jul 2021.
    • Photo: Jennifer Deane

      Jennifer Deane answered on 5 Jul 2021:

      So chemotherapy is a drug that can be given in three ways – one is through a tube into a vein (we call this intravenously), another is as a tablet and the last way is as an injection.

      There are lots of different drugs that can be used, it just depends on the type of cancer you have. This medicine then goes through and kills any cells that might be cancer. Sometimes they kills cells that aren’t cancer too, but it is very good at finding and killing the cancer cells that are in someone’s body.

      There are lots of side effects with chemotherapy although not everyone will get everything. Some people feel very sick, some lose their hair and nails and some are very tired all the time.

      One important thing with chemotherapy is that people can be more likely to get other illnesses like flu, and at the moment COVID, as their immune system (that is the way our body fights off illnesses) doesn’t work as well during chemo and just after it. So we need to be careful to always wash our hands if we are visiting someone who is having chemo and not go to close if we have a cough or a cold.

    • Photo: Samantha Harrison

      Samantha Harrison answered on 6 Jul 2021:

      There are different types of chemotherapy which contain different medicines, so there is not one set “ingredients list” per se. The different types can be used to treat different cancers in different patients, so all of them are important.

      I’d definitely refer you to Jennifer’s answer here, as she knows much more than I do on this topic!

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