Side Affects of Chemo

My dad has to start chemo within the next two weeks. He recently had surgery to remove his tumor in his rectum. 2/3 of rectum was removed as well as tumor. While he is in pain with that part of his surgery, does anyone recommend a special diet, while he is healing.

What are side affects of chemo and what can I do to help him?

On 4/2/2009 elegantdays wrote:

My dad has to start chemo within the next two weeks. He recently had surgery to remove his tumor in his rectum. 2/3 of rectum was removed as well as tumor. While he is in pain with that part of his surgery, does anyone recommend a special diet, while he is healing.

What are side affects of chemo and what can I do to help him?

The side effects of chemo can be managed very well with prescriptions the doctor will give your father. Just make sure he takes them on a schedule and doesn't forget to take a dose. Side effects I have expereinced are: slight nausea, upset stomach, fatigue and nueropathy in my feet. I get a tingling sensation in my feet and I understand your hands can also be effected. Some people actually get pain in the feet and hands, but I have not experinced that. I take glutamine powder my Naturopathic Doctor recommended and this really seems to help. Recently,my oncolgist also suggested Vitamin B6 but I haven't tried this yet. Currently the glutamine powder seems to really help. Depression can also be a side effect of the chemo. Not just the physcosocial aspect of having cancer but the actual chemicals in the chemotherapy can cause depression. Stay postive. There is always hope for improvements and especially after surgery your father will improve with time. The surgery itself will cause most of the fatigue and the farther out he gets from the surgery the more energy he will have. The body just takes time after being cut open and having your internal organs manipulated. I sincerely hope the best for your father and your family. Try hard to  focus on the good things in life. There are many.   Lynne

On 4/2/2009 elegantdays wrote:

My dad has to start chemo within the next two weeks. He recently had surgery to remove his tumor in his rectum. 2/3 of rectum was removed as well as tumor. While he is in pain with that part of his surgery, does anyone recommend a special diet, while he is healing.

What are side affects of chemo and what can I do to help him?

I suggest checking into Coenzyme Q10. It has been used with many different types of cancers with chemo treatments to reduce the side effects and help the chemo do its job.

My mother who was almost 79 when she started chemo for stage IV lung cancer. I put her on CoQ10 300 mg daily and she rarely got sick from the chemo. Her doctors kept increasing the dose since she was handling the treatments so well. However they did finaly get the dose high enough that she didn't eat for a week, then they lowered it again. She never vomited, or had lose bowels during the entire 6 months of chemo treatement.

According to the National Cancer Institutes trials with this enzyme, there were no side effects with any medications or from taking a large dose for long periods of time. They followed breast cancer patients for 4 years or more still taking the supliment and no side effects with doses of 300 - 400mg a day.

I hope this helps your father. Mom is in a type of remission at this time and we will be celebrating her 80th birthday soon.