Chemotherapy Primer III/ Rest & Recovery

This is Kevin's week off treatment. An opportunity for his body to recover a little.

Cancer treatment is a balance between allowing his body time to heal enough to keep him going but not allowing enough time for the cancer cells to fully recover. Eventually the repeated onslaught of chemotherapy kills the cancer cells entirely.

Chemotherapy targets rapidly dividing cells--cancer cells. Unfortunately, there are healthy cells that fall into this category that are also killed or damaged by chemotherapy. This is why many chemotherapies cause hair loss. The good news is that healthy cells recover faster than cancer cells.

So a rest period between treatments lets more of the healthy cells recover while the cancer cells don't recover as well. Eventually the continued weakening of cancer cells kills them faster than they can multiply. The cumulative effect of chemotherapy shows up in ongoing side effects (by damaging healthy cells too) but that accumulation is what ultimately destroys cancer cells.

It's a vicious circle.

Kevin's chemotherapy furthers this concept by using a portable chemotherapy pump to deliver a continuous small dose of a drug over several days. This lessens the damage to healthy cells while killing more cancer cells.

Before Kevin began chemotherapy we used to explain this by saying the plan was that by the end of treatment all of the cancer would be dead and Kevin would be no more than half dead. Now that he's in the midst of treatment and increasing side effects this is more reality than we like to think.