Depending on the disease for which it is administrated or its stage, chemotherapy may be curative or it can be a complementary healing purpose for surgical interventions or radiotherapy. The basic principle of chemotherapy is to reach the cancerous cells to destroy them Chemotherapy can be administrated at hospital and also at home, but it has to be taken under strict medical supervision.
Chemotherapy is administered in treatment cycles. The cycles can be for one or more days and they are followed by a rest period. The duration of each infusion can vary from a few minutes to many hours or several days, depending on the type of cancer, the drugs used and how body responds to treatment. The anti tumor drugs administrated in chemotherapy are highly active products, which act on cells that multiply rapidly, and so on the cancer, but they can also affect the health, the skin, hair, mouth mucosa or bone marrow of the patient.

So the chemotherapy treatment for colon cancer can have several side effects. Bone marrow produces blood cells that are released into the bloodstream, and since they multiply very rapidly, they are very sensitive to chemotherapy. Anti tumor molecules may involve, therefore, a transient decrease in the number of blood cells. Vomiting and nausea are very frequent, and most chemotherapy drugs can occur, even if the first days they were not evident. There are now many treatments to mitigate or neutralize these side effects. It is important to respect your doctor prescription and you must also know that persisting nausea and vomiting are not normal even when chemo is administrated. Tell your doctor about these side effects and he will prescribe you some medicines that can reduce these effects. The hair loss is only a minor and temporary side effect, since hair grows back normally after treatment completion. However, this side effect is the most obvious one and this way we know that someone is under chemotherapy and has cancer. The only cure for hair loss is refrigerant helmet, which reduces the amount of drugs that come into contact with the hair. Fatigue is actually constant throughout the disease, especially during chemotherapy and the following days after its administration and is caused by the disease itself. The effects are caused by certain drugs and treatments and will fade gradually after the end of the treatment.

Today chemotherapy treatment for colon cancer is administrated for those patients that have reached the last stages of the disease, so it is mostly administrated in stages three and four. Sometimes because of chemotherapy the disease can withdraw or its spread can be stopped. Chemotherapy is administrated also as a complementary treatment after or before surgical interventions for colon cancer patients.