About Avoiding Side Effects of Chemotherapy

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'm Dr. David Cathcart. I'm a family practice physician from Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, and we're going to talk about chemotherapy drugs, and their side effects today. Chemotherapy has a wide variety of side effects, that include things like losing your hair, to anemia infections, sores in your mouth, weight loss, you name it, those are the side effects of chemotherapy. Some of them can actually be avoided, or at least reduced. Many of them can't be avoided because they're just the nature of the medicine, and the treatment. Side effects though, are those things that occur to you, that are outside of the scope of actually treating the cancer. So for example, if your hair falls out, that would be a side effect of chemotherapy. It's an unwanted effect of the drug. There's not really a lot you can do to reduce hair loss, if your particular chemotherapy regiment, or combination of drugs causes that. The good thing is, is that not everybody will experience all the side effects that are listed. Losing hair for example can be reduced, or at least improved on by perhaps keeping your hair cut short. Because it makes it look less thin, or less unhealthy if it's cut short. It makes it look a little more full. And the good news is, is that in most all cases after chemotherapy, your hair will grow back. It may grow back in a different texture, or maybe a slightly different color, but it will grow back. Other side effects, things like fevers, those are the kind of things that you want to let your doctor know about as soon as it happens. Because it can be a sign that your immune system is starting to become depressed from the results of the chemotherapy, and you may be getting an infection. Things like sores in your mouth, you'd want to avoid acidic foods, or perhaps tart candies that would irritate those kinds of sores. Certainly weight loss is always a concern with chemotherapy, because of the nausea that's associated with chemotherapy. One thing that may help with the nausea would be to drink water, before, or have your drink before dinner, or before your meal, or perhaps after it, but not necessarily with it. You'd want to have more frequent, but smaller meals, so you're not filling your stomach up as much. And sitting up after eating, as opposed to eating, and laying down would help. So there's, to try and avoid the side effects of chemotherapy, is dependent on each particular side effect. They can't all be avoided, but the good news is, that not everybody gets them. And the really great news is, that nowadays, with the advancement of chemotherapy drugs, the likelihood of side effects is so much less than it used to be. This is Dr. Cathcart talking to you about the side effects of chemotherapy."