Written by Fernando Montalvo on 15 September 2009
There are many things you can do to prepare yourself for chemotherapy (as I’ve shown in the various posts in this series). While some of these things involve action from your part (i.e. setting up a chemotherapy survival kit or getting the appropriate clothing to make yourself comfortable), many require that you adopt a frame of mind and do a little research. By far one of the most important things to consider when getting ready for chemotherapy treatments is the side effects that have given the treatments such a bad reputation. Commonly known are nausea, vomiting, loss of hair, and loss of weight, but there may also be a lot more side effects to reckon with and these vary from medicine to medicine, as well as person to person. Keeping yourself informed about the possible side effects and exploring ways to treat them go a long way towards improving the quality of your chemotherapy experience. There is nothing wrong with being too prepared, even if you happen to be one of the lucky patients who don’t get any side effects at all.
The side effects from chemotherapy are usually more discomforting than the cancer itself. A lot of people don’t even feel anything when they have cancer. The side effects from chemo, on the other hand, can be very distressing and the extreme discomfort some patients feel, coupled with the state of mind that the treatment can get you in, are a serious threat to the treatment process. Patients may stop undertaking treatment if they feel too affected by the mental and physical toll that chemotherapy can take.
While stopping all the side effects is nearly impossible, reducing their effects on you can definitely be done. A frank conversation with your doctor is probably the first step towards understanding what to expect and how you will be treated for those side effects. However, given the almost assembly line way that patients get treated at some hospitals or clinics, your best bet is probably to discuss what to expect with patients that have undergone the treatments you will undertake. You can find patient info in the web, but the patients you meet while visiting oncologist offices or clinics are a good source of help as well. Before and after your treatment, share your experiences with fellow patients and you may find out that they have novel solutions to problems you may be faced with. Regardless of how you go about it, you need to learn what side effects to expect, understand them as best as you can, and learn what the treatments for them are. Only by doing this will you be able to reduce their toll on you. The earlier in the process you learn this, the better. It is probably much better to be the patient that never got acid indigestion from chemo because you always took Prilosec, Protonix, or Zantac straight off the bat, than the guy throwing up his dinner due to extreme acid indigestion while the nurses fetch Pepcid.
A word of caution, though… as I have said many times before, every patient is different and what happens to each one of us in the chemotherapy process will be completely different than what happens to someone else. Even if the condition and treatments are the same, our bodies will always react differently. This will not be different with whatever action you take to solve whichever side effects may plague you. You may get nausea and the first medicine they give you may be Zofran. It may work wonders on you and you never throw up again or, as happened to me, you may actually throw up more and then try a few more medicines until you find one that works (Anzemet in my case). You may start taking Prilosec for your acid stomach problems only to have it stop working on your second round of treatments. A quick switch to Protonix may solve the problem or you may need to experiment more. The point is this: always understand that the process of fighting the chemo side effects is an active and on-going one. You need to continue to battle these side effects because if you beat them, the quality of your life as a chemotherapy patient will improve greatly.
After surviving cancer and coming off of chemotherapy, I have come to understand that the battle with cancer may be more of a mental one than a physical one. Chemo can make such a strong impact on some patients that it may even challenge the will to live of those patients. I was recently discussing this with a fellow cancer patient. He told me that if the doctors had not solved how bad his side effects were, he would have been happier dying. Psychological help is just as important in chemo as your treatments are. That is why I always tell those that will undergo chemo to find the strongest reasons to live before undergoing treatments and then make sure they are somehow reminded of them during treatment. I had recently married when I was diagnosed with cancer and, even if it may sound corny, it was my love for my wife that kept me going even on the darkest of treatment days. A picture of her that I carried in my chemo bag helped me through those times. It may also help to remember that the chemo process, especially for those with survivable cancers, is just a small fraction of your life and, while it may feel really bad sometimes, it will be a piece of your past someday… a memory that helps make you a stronger person.
The Previous Post in the Chemotherapy Survival Guide:
NEXT POST IN THE SERIES ——> HERE.
Tags: Anzemet, Cancer, Chemotherapy, Kapidex, Pepcid, Prilosec, Protonix, Side Effects, Zantac, Zofran
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Written by Fernando Montalvo on 27 July 2009
A sample chemotherapy survival kit. Photo by Fernando Montalvo for Helpoon.com.
While chemotherapy can be a very uncomfortable experience for some, there are steps you can take to improve the experience. Even if you are one of the lucky patients to get no side effects from the chemo drugs, you may still be uncomfortable from your time spent sitting or lying down while receiving chemo. One step you can take to make things better at your chemotherapy treatment center is to take with you a sort of Chemotherapy Survival Kit; a bag filled with things aimed simply at making you more comfortable. Possible things to carry inside this chemo bag are:
1) Small Pillow: While some treatment centers stock pillows that patients can use, it may be better to carry your own pillow as you can make sure it is one that you are comfortable with. While many patients carry full sized pillows that they simply take from their beds in the morning, you could opt for a small, travel-sized pillow which is easier to carry to the treatment center. Today, you can buy these pillows in the luggage areas of Target and Wal-Mart, as well as other stores. The one in the picture above cost only $9.99 at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and the pillow cover cost just a bit less and was available in the same area of the store. You can also find these in online retailers, such as Amazon.com, which has a small pillow with a pillow case combination for $15.00 (Disclaimer: Helpoon.com is an Amazon Affiliate).
2) Blanket: Hospitals and cancer treatment centers can be very cold. Even if the temperature wasn’t that cold, your body temperature may begin to drop after large quantities of chemotherapy drugs and you may wish you had an extra blanket or throw around even if your treatment center stocks these. I actually had to carry two as I got very cold during chemotherapy. I don’t really have any recommendations for you as to which blankets or throws to purchase. Just make sure you get one you’re comfortable with and that you fit under.
3) Bags for nausea: As just about everyone who knows even just a bit about chemotherapy knows, vomiting is a very common effect of chemotherapy for some patients. As a result, chemotherapy centers usually stock different bags for patients that need to throw up. Some look similar to small trash bags, while others are “high-tech” bags that make throwing up a bit easier. Regardless of the bag, it is important that you have it near you when the time comes to use it and that you’re not looking or asking for one when you’re about to throw up. I recommend that on your very first day of chemo you grab some of these or bring very good small trash bags and keep some in your chemo bag. You may need it on the ride home or coming back the next day as well. If you’re going to be using trash bags, make sure to double bag as there may be leaks on one bag.
4) Medicines: You need to consult your doctor on this one as only your medical professional knows which medicines you can or should use while on chemo, but whatever medicines he or she does recommend, it would be a good idea to have them readily available on your chemo bag. I used to carry Tylenol around for frequent headaches that I used to get on some days.
5) Entertainment: Whether you take a Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, crossword puzzle or something else, keeping yourself entertained and distracted from chemo is important. On my first few months of chemo I used to take a Nintendo DS portable video game system, but as the chemo progressed I really couldn’t concentrate on the screen too much so I switched to other forms of entertainment. Granted, some chemo centers have individual TV’s for each patient, as well as board games and crossword puzzles, but you may need some variety so consider bringing options. You may also think about having a portable MP3 player to use if you want to hear some music.
6) Snacks: While many centers have snack machines available, those patients whose chemotherapy is very long and takes up most of the day may want to consider bringing snacks and making meal arrangements. Just remember that if your chemo gives you nausea you may start associating the food you eat with the nausea and you may end up hating those foods for a while. With that in mind, stay away from your very favorite foods as this may make you hate some of them. I still cringe when I smell certain foods more than a year after my last chemotherapy session and many patients tell me they have the same problem. If your chemo drugs give you a foul taste in your mouth, you may want to consider a hard candy with a strong taste, such as a Jolly Rancher. It will remove the foul taste from your mouth and make your chemo much more pleasant. I found this especially true for my shorter, less than an hour long chemo sessions. Having a small packet of salt may help you deal with nausea. A small amount of salt on your tongue may help you cope with nausea, but consult with your doctor on this one.
7) Reading Materials: This one kind of forms part of the whole entertainment thing I wrote about on 5. Chemo sessions are great for reading, although some of the effects of chemo-brain are strong enough to make reading a little bit difficult. If you have any books you need to catch up on or like reading magazines, they may help pass your time during chemotherapy.
8 ) Pictures or Religious Items: Not exactly part of my own personal experience, but soon after entering chemotherapy I realized that a lot of patients carry around either religious items, such as large crosses, or large pictures of their loved ones. Regardless of what inspires you to keep going or helps you with soul searching, if you feel like having any of these things will help you with chemo, go ahead and carry it in your bag.
9) Bottles of Water: While you don’t necessarily need to be drinking water (other things like Gatorade may be OK), it’s a good idea to ensure that you have a supply of liquids. Chemo drugs are dangerous and taking in adequate fluids is important. Just about all chemotherapy centers have a vending machine somewhere with bottled water, but you may prefer something they don’t have or may want to save some money from the high cost per bottle that vending machines usually charge (although you’ll get a cold drink). Carrying a couple of bottles of water may help you after vomiting or if you need to take a pill.
Those are just a few of the suggestions as to which things to carry in your chemo bags. Some centers have restrictions as to what can be carried to your chemo sessions so be sure to ask your provider if there are any such limitations. Of course, some of you may have more ideas as to what to include or may have some personal experiences on this matter. If you have any additional items you think should be included or want to share experiences, please post so in the comments below.
The previous post in the Chemotherapy Survival Guide:
NEXT POST IN THE SERIES —-> HERE
Tags: Cancer, Chemotherapy, Chemotherapy Survival Kit
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Written by Fernando Montalvo on 15 July 2009
Picture of a chemo-port implant. A specialized needle is inserted in the yellowish circle you see in the middle of the port, which would lie under your skin. The device then transfers the drug through the tube directly into your circulatory system.
Something you may hear about soon after being diagnosed with cancer and facing the prospect of chemotherapy is a little device called a chemo-port or portacath (port-a-cath). These medical ports, which also go by other names, are basically little implants that are placed inside you to facilitate the administering of chemotherapy. While the idea of getting an implant surgery may frighten you, believe me when I say that the chemo-port is a very useful little device. If your doctor advises this option, you may want to consider it seriously.
Chemotherapy usually involves the placing of very toxic compounds inside of you intravenously. A chemo-port aids in this process in the following ways:
1) Having a chemo-port means that your oncology nurse will not have to go searching for a vein every day you’re being treated. Not only does this mean that he or she won’t be prodding your arm with needles in search of a vein, but it also reduces the damage caused to the vein by repeatedly injecting the vein.
2) Since chemotherapy drugs can be very toxic to skin and other tissue, it is vital that it is kept away from these tissues. A chemo-port ensures that the drug is delivered directly into the bloodstream. Patients who opt to stay away from portacaths may suffer damage to the skin and muscle in the areas in which the chemotherapy drugs are being injected. This damage can get very severe sometimes and can lead to amputation in extreme cases.
3) Having a chemo-port means that some of your blood work can be done with samples extracted through the chemo-port (although this is not always the case) and, if you get sick during chemo, drugs such as antibiotics can be injected through the chemo port.
Getting a chemo-port implant is a relatively easy procedure, it’s a same-day outpatient procedure and recovery from it is very fast. You are in and out of surgery in less than half-an-hour (not counting prep time of course). Getting it removed is just as simple.
I personally loved how the chemo-port made chemotherapy a lot easier for me than for some patients that did not have it. Other patients told me they were especially annoyed by the nurses having increased difficulty finding useful veins after a few chemo sessions. The chemo-port isn’t all happiness: there is the feeling of something inside your body (usually just under the skin on your chest), you may have to go on regular visits to the oncology department to have it cleaned, and it does generate a mild discomfort sometimes, but the benefits far outweigh these inconveniences. While I still feel some discomfort from where the chemo port used to be to this day, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The previous post in the Chemotherapy Survival Guide Series:
NEXT POST IN THE SERIES—–> HERE.
Tags: Cancer, Chemo Port, Chemotherapy, Mediport, Medport, Port-a-cath, Portacath
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Written by Fernando Montalvo on 13 July 2009
Photo by limowreck666 via Flickr. (Creative Commons. Some rights retained by author)
If there is ever a time when being a bit selfish is probably a good idea, it is during chemotherapy. Chemotherapy (and this also applies to radiotherapy) is about YOU. What I want to emphasize by this is that getting treated for cancer can be a very difficult process and it’s important that you as a patient focus on yourself primarily during this time. While this is a time that is particularly difficult to those around you, making yourself responsible for the feelings of those around you will only make things more difficult for you. While there are probably a few exceptions to this, I believe a chemo patient should not worry about others around until he or she has dealt with his or her own issues.
Of course, there are different stages during chemotherapy that have different impacts on how a patient feels both emotionally and psychologically. There are also different stages/moods in how a patient may be dealing with a disease (e.g. denial, preoccupation, giving up). However, regardless of differences in chemotherapy symptoms or stages, I am referring to how a patient must deal with the treatment’s difficulties when the times are rough. Chemotherapy is not only a difficult process because of the medicines that are administered, but also because of the financial burden that the disease can cause in some families, the preoccupation with the possibility of death, watching a loved one suffer, and other such things. As a result, your spouse, kids, other family members, and even friends may develop difficulty issues all of their own as they try to cope with your illness. While they may seek your help during difficult times, it’s important that you keep your focus on yourself. Remember, in any fight for survival, you are the most important element. You need to deal with your issues first and possibly ignore others needs altogether until a time when you can actually be more helpful. Trying to help others at this time may simply add more things for you to worry and, as patients with some of the effects of “chemo-brain” know, you don’t need extra things to worry about. You need to prepare for this before you get too far into chemo because some patients get so negative during treatment that the extra worrying may be the final straw they need to refuse treatment and give up all together.
If other people need help, then let them seek it on their own. There are countless professionals out there waiting to help, hundreds of self-help books such as the ones that appear on the Amazon.com advertisements on these pages, and other friends and family members that may be ready to lend a hand. Remember, this is a life and death issue and your survival matters. You can deal with the effects of cancer on others as soon as you are done with treatment. Sure, you can’t really ignore your spouse or kids completely, but other family members and friends can definitely wait. At least that is my opinion from talking to and watching others go through chemotherapy. What does everyone else think?
The next chapter in the Chemotherapy Survival Guide will be Thursday.
The previous post on the Chemotherapy Survival Guide:
NEXT POST IN THE SERIES —-> HERE.
Tags: Cancer, Chemotherapy, Chemotherapy Survival, Radiotherapy
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Written by Fernando Montalvo on 09 July 2009
Photo by penmachine via Flickr. (Creative Commons. Some rights reserved by author.)
For most people outside the world of cancer, chemotherapy is just one particular medical treatment that takes care of all cancers. They do not know about all the different versions of chemo and generally think that only dosage and frequency are changed from one patient to the next. However, this is far from the truth. Chemotherapy is the cumulative name given to quite a lot of medical procedures used to treat cancer. As long as it’s a substance being inserted (through a variety of mechanisms) into the patient’s body to treat cancer, it will be called chemotherapy. Just as there are hundreds of different diseases under the cancer banner, there are a wide variety of chemotherapy treatments. In other words, if three chemo patients were to meet at a cancer treatment center, it is likely that their treatments are completely different procedures.
As a result of this, and complemented by the differences inside each of our bodies, each cancer patient undergoes different experiences with the chemotherapy process (although there are similarities between patients). When most people think of chemo side effects, probably the most common one to come to mind is the hair loss. Chemo patients are supposed to be bald, right? The answer to this question is “No.” While a lot of chemotherapy patients lose their hair (me included) during treatment, a good portion of patients go through it with minimal or no hair loss. Others never suffer from the effects of nausea, another common chemo side effect. It is important for the cancer patient to find information on the treatments and side effects for his/her particular kind of cancer and chemotherapy combination.
I think I learned the most about different chemo treatments while waiting each morning for chemo to start in the treatment center’s waiting room. For about an hour before the chemo treatments started, most of the morning patients would be in the same room talking to each other. You learned the different experiences everyone had with chemo. Some patients would enter treatment once a month for an hour, while others would spend an entire week connected to a machine for eight hours a day. Some patients would have uncontrollable vomit, while others looked as if it was just any other day for them.
The point I’m trying to get across is that, as a cancer patient, you need to understand that your chemotherapy experience will be your own. My chemotherapy is not the same as your chemotherapy or her chemotherapy. Even if two patients shared the same treatments, chances are the reactions would be totally different. You need to understand this as you enter treatment because sometimes patients feel like something is wrong with the treatment when they start getting symptoms that don’t fit what they heard another patient say happened to them. You have to remember that chemo isn’t like taking Tylenol Multi-symptom for a cold. You don’t feel better afterwards. No, chemo is basically poison-taking and your body will react to it in varied and unexpected ways. Of course, you need to inform your oncology professional (nurse or doctor) of your symptoms, but don’t feel like there is something wrong with the treatment when symptoms you never heard of start happening. Remember; don’t judge yourself by how other patients are reacting. You experience is your own and while you may have the worst side effects of any patient in the treatment center, you may be healing quicker than anyone else.
Monday in Helpoon’s Chemotherapy Survival Guide: “Chemotherapy is about YOU!”
Other posts in the CSG series:
Tags: Chemo, Chemotherapy
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