Colorectal Cancer: In Treatment: Chemotherapy

•  If you haven’t been to the chemotherapy facility before, consider taking a family member or friend with you to the first treatment. If you’d like, continue to take someone with you as often as necessary.
• Dress in layers so you can add or remove clothes depending on whether or not you feel cold during treatment. Wear comfortable, layered clothing with easy access to your chemo port .  A loose top with buttons at the neck so that the port can be easily accessed.  If you prefer you can find tops with chemo port access at http://chemotherapyclothing.com/index.html
• Take an activity to keep yourself busy during treatment. For instance, a good book, or a pad or lap top with games or work.  Bring something that you find relaxing and enjoy doing, you may be there for several hours.  If you bring music bring earbuds so you do not disturb your neighbors.  Some people find this an ideal nap time also.
• Before each treatment:
  • Take some time to relax. Consider meditating or doing deep relaxation breathing. Both meditation and deep breathing can be done anywhere at any time. You don’t need any special training to do either technique. For information about meditation, click here. For deep breathing, click here.
  • Eat before each treatment, if you can. It is often difficult to eat after a chemotherapy treatment. (Take a snack with you to treatment in case you have to wait).
• Drink plenty of safe water.
• During a treatment: Some oncologists recommend doing the following while chemotherapy is being administered to act as an anesthetic and to also provide hydration:
  • Suck on a sugar-free popsicle 
  • Eat ice cubes or ice chips. 
• If you find you get queasy after treatment let your medical oncologist know. He or she can prescribe anti-nausea medication.

Keep in mind that you may not experience any side effects at first, but they may appear and then become get worse as treatment continues. Some side effects may linger after treatment ends.

Side effects are a price for regaining health or at least minimizing the effects of cancerSome people would say the price is small compared to the potential reward.

If side effects do start to appear, the articles in “To Learn More”  provide practical information about minimizing the effect.

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