What are the permanent, long term affects of chemo and radiation on your body and mind?

Answer 1

It depends on the medicine of the chemo. Different medicines have different long term effects. Radiation is also variant depending on how many treatments and where. The best thing to do is find out what specific medicine that will be given and then do research on that particular medicine. You'd be suprised at how your body recovers from any of the long term effects! Stay positive no matter what!

Answer 2

First off you have to consider the permanent and long term effects of not having chemo or radiation and that is certain death. All cancer treatments have some downside or risk and it is the duty of a good oncologist or radiation oncologist to make these long term risks clear to the patient and their family.

Some, but not all, chemotherapy drugs can cause neuropathy, usually in the feet which means either temporary or possibly permanent tingling in the extremities. Some people are more prone to this happening than others so this is by no means a universal problem but it can be very aggravating in some situations.

Some types of radiation treatment to the throat can cause dry mouth or difficulty swallowing but this still beats pushing up daisies. Radiation to the brain might cause a feeling of mental slowness or physical lethargy that might be temporary or might not. If you have a brain tumor and your choices are being a little different afterwards vs terrible headaches followed by paralysis and then death, feeling a little different is not a bad option.

Also, you have to remember that when people complain about not being told of the risks, yes there are Drs that do not emphasize the risks enough but also there are many people who are either poor listeners or only hear the part of the message that they want to hear.

You ask a good question and there is no universal answer. A person contemplating any cancer treatment should do a personal risk vs benefit assessment and make sure the treatment will actually help rather than just being a reflexive response to not wanting to die.

Answer 3

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What are the permanent, long term affects of chemo and radiation on your body and mind?

Answer 4

Depending on where the radiation is directed it can cause a variety of seriously negative effects. For instance when directed at the throat, it can cause mouth dryness so bad it causes loss of teeth and bad breath.

In the intestines it causes the intestines to stick to each other which can cause severe pain when eating.

There are systemic effects as well.

Radiation has a negative effect on the fatty acids in the body, so negative that it can cause a miserable death.

Radiation rotates one of the hydrogen atoms on the body's fatty acids 90 degrees. That seems innocuous, doesn't it? But it's not at all innocuous...it can be deadly.

The rotation causes a trienically conjugated fatty acid...or to put it more simply, thee hydrogens lined up in a row. That is a bad thing, because the rotation is in the middle of the three hydrogens all in a row.

Normally, the middle spot is open to let oxygen molecules dock and be transported into the cell. The two outside hydrogen atoms are like the outside tynes of a fork with the oxygen molecule locked in between.

But now in the middle space there is a third hydrogen rotated into the space where the oxygen would usually dock...so the oxygen can't dock, and it can't get transferred into the cell.

Rancidity can result. Once the rancidity starts, it's just like rancid meat...it tends not to get better. Once the rancidity gets bad enough, death ensues.

A similar problem has arisen in food irradiation. For years, there has been an attempt to irradiate meat, but they keep running into the problem of rancidity. It will never be solved because of the way radiation rotates the hydrogen atom 90 degrees. It just can't be fixed.

In living animals and humans, the severity of the problem can be evaluated by measuring the oxalic index. Unfortunately, your doctor doesn't know how to calculate the oxalic index. When the oxalic index reaches 17, death occurs.

This is one of the reasons that radiation will never improve its success ratio.

A second negative bonus of radiation is that radiation induces a catabolic imbalance of the metabolism. That imbalance produces an environment that allows cancer to flourish. When catabolism is overactive, the body basically falls apart, with weight loss and lots of fluid retention.

Good luck and be well.

Kelley

Answer 5

Long term effects of Chemo are related to the fact that although the drugs kill or reduce cancer cells when they are administered, many are long term poisons or carcinogens, which can lead to a higher risk of developing new cancers in the future.
In the medium term, it can take several years for the drugs to totally leave your system and the fuzziness of "chemo brain" and constant lethargy to wear off!
Long term effects of radiation can be things like skin thickening and scar tissue from the radiation burns often experienced. Exposure to radiation can also cause cell mutation and again can lead to a higher risk of new cancers developing.
It is a balance between the possible risk of the cancer spreading and the possible development of new cancers that influences why some undergo these treatments and others do not.

Answer 6

The only permanent, long-term effect (not "affect", LOL!) chemo had on me was I GOT BETTER and I'm still here!

Your very question, if you think about it, is ludicrous! It's like people that complain about chlorine in the water...of COURSE there's a possible long-term downside, but if the chlorine wasn't there, most of us would die of typhus or cholera before age 15! What exactly would that make us "safe" from?

Answer 7

Hopefully the long term permanent affect after chemo and radiation will be . . the chance to live.

The alternative is to face progressive disease and death.

Answer 8

fatigue
sometimes memory loss-time helps restore this
medical conditions that need Dr. care -Cirrhosis;Lung