What exactly is Chemotherapy

[Treena]

What does it do and what is it? I've had many people close to me go through it and I understand it fights the disease but I don't understand what elements or chemicals are in it and why the use of radiation? Any information would be appreciated, thanks!
Bozema: I'm sorry you have to go through breast cancer and chemotherapy. Many close to me have gotten different forms of cancer, and one close to me has gotten and beat breast cancer. She said zofran worked wonders for the nausea due to chemotherapy, there's also medical marijuana but it's debatable but in my opinion it's great for nausea and other things. I hope you beat the disease, and once you do you'll come out stronger than ever, just stay strong during this time, please get well and best wishes.

[Mark M]

Chemotherapy is the treatment of disease by means of chemicals that have a specific toxic effect upon the disease- producing microorganisms or that selectively destroy cancerous tissue.

[JeNnA TTC # 1]

It involves spending time in hospital, either on an outpatient basis or for a few days. The treatment is administered at intervals depending on the stage and type of cancer, and the health and age of the patient. The medication is given via a drip feed, generally into the arm. In most cases the patient sits in an armchair and reads, or listens to music for the several hours involved. Side-effects again depend on individuals and can vary from nothing to hair loss,nausea and infertility. The alternative is radiotherapy and I believe that the latter has more side effects.

[Bozema]

There are many chemotherapy drugs and different ones are used to treat different kinds of cancer. What is common to all of them is that cancer cells generally are very fast growing and the goal of chemotherapy is to kill off fast growing cells in the body. That's why people undergoing chemo tend to have a lot of side effects - such as hair loss, and nausea - these parts of the body also have fast growing cells that are affected by the treatment. But chemo has benefits over other treatments like surgery and radiation - it kills cancer cells that might be spreading to other parts of the body where treatments like radiation and surgery are only focused on specific tumors or lymph nodes. So chemo despite the side effects is an important part of treatment for many cancer patients.

EDIT - thank you for your good wishes. Yes, Zofran is pretty effective and I'm taking it along with Emend which is also very helpful. I also find medical marijuana debatable and I am not interested in trying it at this time (besides the fact it smells terrible to me). My treatment is going very well so far and that helps me keep a good attitude.