What kinds of different chemo treatments are there?What is chemo?Is it the use of pills to kill cancer cells?
christy.m2008 asked:
ok thanks but this woman had the tumor took out and it was the size of a football and now they have her on pills they wont make her hair fall out will they?
ok thanks but this woman had the tumor took out and it was the size of a football and now they have her on pills they wont make her hair fall out will they?
Chemotherapy is the use of radiation to kill cancer cells. Not pills. I don’t think there are different kinds of chemotherapy.
There are many forms of Chemo. A good oncologist is the one who reviews your case history and then prescribes what kind of chemo if any would be most effective to kill the cancer cells which lie in you. Often it is administered through inter-venous.
‘trouble’ is a little bit confused.
Chemotherapy and radiation are two separate treatments for cancer.
There are several different chemotherapy drugs available and, as mentioned above, an oncologist will decide on an individual basis which ones will work best. They are usually administered over several months in the doctor’s office or treatment center through an IV on a schedule of one per every three weeks or so.
Radiation is a series of treatments, each one quick and painless, in which radon beams are delivered directly to the tumor. This course of treatment may be administered almost daily for several weeks.
Chemotherapy is the use of chemicals (drugs) to reduce or kill cancer cells in the body. There are many different drugs, depending on the type of cancer, and the amount of cancer.
The drugs can be given as pills, but more usually are given as a liquid by intravenous drip (IV).
All the drugs are rather toxic…they have to be to kill the cancer cells. So they have side effects.
SOME drugs will cause the hair to fall out. Some don’t. And each person’s reaction can be different.
For example, breast cancer drugs usually cause hairloss, for colon cancer drugs, hairloss is rare.
Good luck!
my mom is currently doing radiation 5 days a week until further notice. she was diagnosed with stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer about 7 months ago. she tried 4 different “mixtures” of different chemo drugs, and got soooo sick. then they just found that she’s got cancer ALL up & down her spine, and 2 huge tumors, one on her thoracic spine & one on her lumbar spine that are causing a LOT of excruciating pain, where she can’t even walk! they’re doing the radiation to help alleviate her pain.
I had asked her oncologist about Tarceva, which is an oral cancer drug (Gleevec is too) and the dr said that the pills are much more slow working than chemo or radiation. check with an oncologist to be sure.