The Side Effects of Chemotherapy

ByPrimary Researcher

Table of Contents: Select a Link to be Taken to That Section

Executive Summary

  • Side effects of chemotherapy are usually listed in an antiseptic way at the major medical sites that promote chemotherapy.
  • The following are first-hand accounts of the side effects.

Introduction

The side effects of chemotherapy are horrible. And it is essential to do what oncologists and cancer centers don’t want patients to do — to analyze chemotherapy’s costs versus the benefits.

Go to top

Chemotherapy Side Effects at a High Level

These quotes are from the article Half of Breast Cancer Patients Experience Severe Side Effects.

Overall, 93 percent of women said they experienced at least one of the seven side effects, with 45 percent rating it severe or very severe. Pain, skin irritation and constipation were most frequently severe or very severe.

Most patients sought help for side effects during routine doctor’s appointments, but 9 percent scheduled an additional appointment, and 5 percent went to an emergency department or a hospital.

Women who had both chemotherapy and radiation treatment were 30 percent more likely to report a severe side effect, compared with women who had only one of those treatments.

“As an oncologist, I knew from my clinical practice that more women were suffering than is generally reported in clinical trials,” says Allison Kurian, M.D., M.Sc., associate professor of medicine and of health research and policy at Stanford University. “Often, women suffer in silence, afraid to tell their providers about how bad things really are for fear that their treatments may be halted. We need to change that.”

Case #1

This is from the Quora article Is chemotherapy a fraud?

People who sing the praises of chemotherapy have obviously not taken it weekly for 3 years. Or else they are not Stage IV squamous cell lung cancer. And if anyone can stand two years of opdivo without all those horrible side effects, they are doing better than me. All I can say is that I had to be out of my mind to ever let them begin dumping rat poison into my veins. The side effects alone have convinced me of this.