Fifth Chemo Treatment

A day will come when people will look back at the use of chemotherapy in the battle against cancer and shake their heads at the barbarity of it.

In order to kill cancer cells, chemotherapy has to also kill healthy cells. While there’s not enough healthy cell death to result in death to the entire organism, it is kind of like a little death, and in some extreme cases may result in death to the person.

Chemotherapy drugs work by targeting cells that grow and divide quickly. This describes cancer cells but also describes other cells such as hair-producing cells and three types of blood cells–white cells, red cells, and platelets. Our bodies will start immediately trying to rebuild these cells. Over time the rebuilding process must take longer and become more difficult. Of course if there is any cancer present, it is also trying to reconstitute itself. Treatments are scheduled in a timely fashion to prevent cancer cells from growing back, and this will also slow the growth of normal cells.

Unlike healthy cells, cancer cells do not die naturally. Chemotherapy forces them to die. And since they are not produced naturally like other kinds of fast-growing cells, once they’re dead, they’re gone and cannot regenerate themselves.

This doesn’t mean that normal cells can’t again eventually become cancerous. This is why it’s critically important to make sure normal cells are as healthy as possible, and this means supplying them with all the resources they need, namely water, oxygen, nutrients and the means of being rid of toxins. But this is a blog post for another day.

As I mentioned earlier, each chemo treatment tends to be worse than the one before as the body struggles to recover.

I’m happy to report that the side effects of the fifth treatment were not as intense as they were after the previous treatment. For this I credit acupuncture and supplements. But I’m sad to report that the side effects, especially nausea and extreme fatigue, lasted longer this time–about eight days.

I am very grateful I only have one treatment to go. I can’t express how much I’m looking forward to being able to regain my health (and my hair!) and steadily rebuild on it till all is restored.

This, of course, assumes there won’t be any cancer that shows up on the post-chemo CT scan. One day, one challenge at a time.

I can fully understand why some people may choose not to undergo chemotherapy, considering the devastating side effects and the sheer barbarity of it. And there are plenty of so-called alternative medicine doctors out there touting some miracle natural cure that they claim has been hushed up by the medical establishment because there is huge money to be made in pharmaceutical cancer treatments.

I would just have soon skipped chemo myself, but the biology of how it works makes sense. New treatments, especially in the area of immunotherapy, are being developed and showing promise. If you dig deep to find reliable evidence that those alleged miracle natural cures really work, you will be hard pressed. For now, chemotherapy and radiation are the best we’ve got against this devastating disease.

I believe it’s worth checking out alternative treatments, especially truly natural methods such as foods, herbs, exercise, meditation, and anything else that is good, healthy, and safe for our bodies. (I highly recommend the book “Anticancer,” and that is also a blog post for another day.) These should be done in conjunction with conventional medicine, not instead of it. Is it worth gambling our lives on the word of some alternative medicine person who claims to have the next miracle cure? No, I don’t think so. Making the wrong choice could mean losing the battle altogether.

I’m blessed to have lots of support from friends and family, and to have lots of people praying for me. This fact alone is enough to give me extra strength to get through this and stay optimistic about the future. I must confess that I’m not very optimistic or positive when I’m in the throes of the nasty side effects. I wish I was better at enduring suffering. But I just keep reminding myself that it’s temporary and it’s for a good cause.

My heartfelt thanks and love to all of you who are helping to prop me up during my journey.