chemotherapy

Helping a Loved One During Chemo

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Mother helping a loved one during chemo

There is no easy part of breast cancer. The initial surgery, chemotherapy, and reconstruction each have their own challenges. With that said, chemotherapy is often the most difficult and longest-lasting part of treatment. Let’s look at helping a loved one during chemo. Helping a Loved One During Chemo The extreme fatigue, constant nausea, and lack of reprieve makes chemotherapy physically and emotionally draining. The good news is that there are a number of ways that you can help. From one family that went through breast cancer to another, here are the things you can do to make the biggest difference. Help Care for Dependents If there are young children or pets then helping to care for them is the best thing you can possibly do to help someone going through chemotherapy. You don’t have to be there long-term. The first two to three days after treatment are the worst. …

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Finding Support During Chemotherapy

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Finding support during chemotherapy

Chemotherapy treatment can be the most challenging time of your life, but you aren’t alone: here are tips for finding support during chemotherapy. There is nothing quite like hearing a cancer diagnosis. The threat of mortality, the lost possibilities, and a future filled with uncertainty are aspects that no one can ignore. Yet, we constantly see images of the stoic cancer patient in media. These characters that just sit there, somehow totally at peace with their diagnosis, are not something that you have to aspire to be. You are allowed to be scared. You are allowed to be angry. These are all normal emotions that you should feel. However, it is possible to let them consume you, which could harm your chances of reaching a full recovery. The Complications of Chemo Learning to recognize your negative emotions without letting them take over your life is hard enough. Chemotherapy adds …

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How Long Does it Take to Treat Breast Cancer?

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Pink breast cancer ribbon on alarm clock

There are many factors to consider when determining how long breast cancer takes to treat. Even your doctor will only be able to give estimates based on how far your cancer has spread through the breast tissue and where it has metastasized if it has metastasized at all. Their estimates are based on decades of experience and medical research. However, you should still ask your doctor to give you two estimates, one that imagines everything going to plan and one that factors in common complications. Taking all factors into consideration, the Mayo Clinic suggests that the average treatment length for breast cancer can be divided into two categories: early-stage breast cancer and advanced breast cancer. When trying to figure out how long breast cancer takes to treat, it’s important to start here. If you’re lucky and catch your condition early on, then your breast cancer treatment will generally last …

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How Does Chemotherapy Work?

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Cancer treatment chemotherapy room

While there is no one cure for the many forms of cancer, modern medicine has discovered the procedure of chemotherapy as a measure to combat cancer in the human body. However, the process of chemotherapy is a confusing one to understand and there are many different aspects to the treatment. For clarity about chemotherapy, read our guide on how chemotherapy works. If you need chemotherapy in Austin and are looking for a qualified medical professional, contact the team at the Breast Institute Austin. What is Chemotherapy? Chemotherapy is the process of using a drug or a combination of drugs through an intravenous or endocrine application to treat cancer. This process has proven to be an effective but painful treatment, as the drugs used are classified as systemic treatments. This means that in the process of trying to kill or slow fast-growing cancer cells, it can also target healthy, fast-growing …

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