Chemo's Major Side Effect

It’s astonishing how one diagnosis can completely alter the life of a family. One day you’re looking to move into the fancy houses along the coast, and the next you’re forced to consider if you would be able to afford the same home with one income. When I was three years old my mom was diagnosed with uterine cancer. I was too young to know what was happening, but at the age of seven, when my mom was diagnosed for the second time, I began to notice a change in my family’s daily life. I was told not to sit on my mom’s lap and that she could not play with me as much as usual due to her Chemotherapy, but it was not until her third time contracting cancer that I noticed the pain she was in. I was fourteen when I finally learned about the very thing I had been trying to figure out for nearly my entire life. This burden has solely shaped the way I act and how I handle life’s many challenges, but how it accomplished this was not always a joyous experience.

My mom instantly went through four intense chemotherapy treatments. I would miss class, school events, and visits with friends to sit with her through her three-hour chemotherapy sessions. When we came home from therapy, she would sleep a lot, and I was sure to be there by her side through it all.

The word home is metaphor for the greater culture to which we belong and represents the influence of that culture on our way of thinking and acting. The sum of all of these forces then, defines who we are as individuals and serve to define what motivates us to action, our nature.

There is a wide range or types of cancers with different types of side effects, treatments can be used to help decrease the type of tumor. Chemotherapy provides chemicals that can kill those individual cells. While the surgical procedure works by removing the tumor directly. And Radiation provides x-rays to kill individual cells.Cancers are not contagious in any way, because the cancer is internal and are in no way, shape, or form like a flu or a cold. Tumor cells display increased metabolic autonomy when compared to to non-transformed cells, taking up nutrients and blocking them in pathways that support growth .Which is why an increasing amount of cancer patients had swelling in different parts of their bodies.These cancerous cells increase much faster than regular cells and taken up space for other cells to grow, the tumor increases more and more until your body cannot provide regular cells anymore, which is why treatment is needed.There are two different types of tumors, benign tumors and malignant tumors. Usually benign tumors are not as harmful as the malignant tumors, but it can be serious if it spreads through blood vessels or nerves. Benign Tumors usually form because of environmental toxins, genetics,

Home is for many the house they grew up in, because that’s where everything in their life started, it’s the place everything

My mom would need twelve weeks of treatment for the first round of chemo, and then four weeks of treatment for the second round. The two rounds consisted of two different medicines. The first round was longer, but the second round was more intense. I didn’t really recognize when she began to lose her hair it just gradually kept getting thinner and thinner. I knew that being bald was one of her biggest issues with the whole chemo portion of her treatment. She was going to have to lose all of her hair. When I thought about it I knew there were a lot of things in life that were worse than loosing hair. People face so many tragedies every day, and it is crazy to be disappointed about hair when people can die. I had tried to put into perspective why not having hair would bother my mom so much. I then realized that people could just see her for the disease and not herself. I didn’t realize that this part of cancer can be the toughest time for people because they look the most like cancer

When we hear the words, cancer treatment, our minds naturally shoot straight to chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is one of the most commonly used ways to treat cancer. Chemotherapy did not have original plans to treat cancer patients but it did have other plausible problems to aid. After WWII, lymphoma, a form of chemotherapy, was used to help soldiers who were harmed by mustard gas (Chemo Brain, 2012). This medical advancement continued to progress into what we now know as chemotherapy. However, no action takes precedence without effects, good or bad. Although chemotherapy is given to cancer patients in hopes of a positive outcome, chemo can have negative effects. Common effects that are seen in cancer

Common toxic side effects of chemotherapy include nausea and fatigue and the personal impacts of physical change, including hair loss, weight loss, and skin changes. Hair loss reflects identity and self-associated with health beauty, youthfulness, sexuality, and personality; especially with cancer patients’ women (Rosman, 2004).

treatment centers can help the patients and their family adjust to hair loss and fatigue to find the right

Chemotherapy can cause side effects. Chemotherapy not only kills, abnormal cells that multiply without control but also kills or slows the growth of healthy cells, which grow and divide quickly. Damage to the healthy cells can cause side effects such as mouth sores, nausea and hair loss. (ej.)Side effects often happen after a chemotherapy session.

For myself, the word "home" represents safety, acceptance, warmth, and comfort. Home means so much more than a physical

I was instantly heart broken and terrified I would lose the person that motivated me to do my best. My mom had to go through seventeen chemotherapy treatments and three surgeries. Throughout this entire process, I was terrified, but I tried my best to hide it. I knew that my mom needed a solid support system and optimism in the atmosphere. My mom getting cancer made it hard for me to focus in school, sports, and I failed to be a teenager by being with friends and gaining new experiences. About two years later, I was a senior in high school when my mom was pronounced cancer free. A huge weight was lifted off my shoulders, and I never felt so grateful in my life. My mom’s cancer taught us both to be optimistic in challenging situations, trust God’s plans, and to never take advantage of what you have because you never know when it can slip

"Most cancer patients in this country die from chemotherapy. Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon, or lung cancers. This fact has been documented for over a decade, yet doctors still use chemotherapy for these tumors. As someone who has been through cancer this information is startling because chemotherapy is being used on things is cannot cure." (Ransom, 2016, p.1). Therefore, chemo has more of a negative effect on the body as a whole. Chemotherapy is the treatment of disease by the use of chemical substances, especially the treatment of cancer by toxins and other drugs. With chemotherapy there are many cognitive effects which negatively effect the process of perception, memory, judgement, reasoning, and often times the emotional

My children having to get ready for school , eat dinner, prepare for bed, and several other things without mommy because I was too weak and sick to get out of bed. My husband having to take care of the children and me while working full time. It's takes a toll on everyone not just the cancer patient. I remember my children running into my room before bed with a bed time story, but I was too fatigued to even read the entire story to them. They were not quite old enough to fully understand what cancer was, but they knew I was sick and very weak. It was hard for them to have friends come over, not because they were ashamed , but they had to explain why their mother looked like a lifeless zombie.

What does one call a place where they feel safe? A place where one is surrounded by loved ones? A place where one can forget the worries of the world for even a brief moment. A place where no matter what happens, they will always have a place to return to. They have the deepest of connections with those that live there; connections that they know will never be severed no matter what happens. That is home. Home can be defined as where a person lives or has a permanent residence, but it is more than that when pondering on the emotional connection it has with the heart. A common phrase that is constantly used is “there is no place like home”. It is not because a person misses their previous residence, but due to the many qualities it possesses that could possibly never be found anywhere else. Home is not simply a place where one lives, but a place where love, contentment, and tranquility are abound.