Triple Negative Breast Cancer Chemotherapy Treatments
What is chemotherapy and how does it work?
Chemotherapy (“chemo”) is a cancer treatment that uses medicines to stop the growth of cancer cells. Technically, drugs that kill bacteria and other germs are also called chemotherapy, but the term is most commonly used to refer to cancer-killing drugs.
Although most people think of chemotherapy as intravenous infusions, it can also be taken by mouth or injected into a muscle. Because the chemotherapy eventually gets into the bloodstream, all three of these methods of administration allow the chemotherapy to attack cancer cells at sites great distances from the original cancer. Sometimes it is better to place the chemotherapy directly into an organ like the liver, into the spinal fluid, or into a body cavity like the peritoneum (abdominal cavity) or pleura (chest cavity).
This is usually done in conjunction with the body-wide (systemic) treatment, but not always. Chemotherapy drugs work in a variety of ways, but they all work by killing cancer cells or stopping them from growing. Most chemotherapy drugs are not too smart.
These cytotoxic drugs work by killing fast-growing cells, but they cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a healthy cell. Cancer cells grow much faster than even the fastest growing normal cells. If the cell is unable to reproduce, it will eventually die without another cell to replace it. This results in a decrease in the number of cancer cells. Some normal cells grow very slowly and others, like hair, blood cells, and the cells lining the gastrointestinal tract, grow relatively fast. That is why side effects of chemotherapy may include low blood cell counts, mouth sores, diarrhea, hair loss, and infertility.
Jessica’s comments:
Losing my hair again was devastating to me. I was so excited when it grew back before after my chemo. Now it’s gone again and I don’t know if it will grow back based on all the medicines I’m taking. That may seem like a petty issue to most people but for me seeing my own hair back on my head meant that I was healthy again. So seeing that it is gone and having others know it is gone represents illness that I find very scary.
It would be easier for me if the treatments I had didn’t cause hair loss. The doctors feel that chemotherapy, however, is my best option right now so I’ll do what I have to do to keep fighting off this disease.
