Cancer treatment symptoms and effects can cause you to feel tired, ill, and worse than you did before the treatment began.
How You Might be Feeling
With the many treatments available for aggressive cancers, many patients are able to have their choice between therapies. They can choose to use radiation or chemotherapy or surgery or some combination of all of the available treatments. In doing so, you might be able to avoid many of the cancer treatment symptoms. However, for most people, you will find you have some side effects which might be hard to manage.
For example, radiation and chemotherapy can both cause you to have stomach upset as well as hair loss. These treatments are designed to kill healthy and unhealthy cells in the body, which can make the body react in a violent way. However, the more targeted approaches are able to minimize symptoms and side effects.
Other people have troubles managing cancer fatigue as the treatments simply knock them out. They can’t work regularly and they have troubles keeping up with everyday tasks. Though they sleep a lot, their energy levels are hard to predict and they often need to rest more than others.
Turning Your Health Around
While these symptoms of cancer and its subsequent treatments can be difficult at first, there are a number of ways to treat troublesome effects. Many of the new chemotherapy medications, for example, are given to patients along with medications to offset the possibility of nausea and stomach upset. Patients are also able to use medications which have no side effects at all. Surgeries to remove the cancer may take time to heal, but once the incision heals, the side effects are minimal.
It’s true, there might be some long term effects of undergoing cancer treatment. Some women find they are unable to conceive as are some male cancer patients. You might also find that your hair grows back and has a new color or a new texture after radiation and chemo. Others find they will always be more fatigued than they were before the cancer. By turning to other cancer patients and to cancer resources, you can continue to get the support you need as you move into remission.