Once a cancer diagnosis is confirmed, it's time to determine how to treat it. The three basic ways to treat cancer are radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. When disussing the options with a healthcare team, you may discover that you will benefit from one treatment or a combination of all three.

Whether preparing for or from treatments, this is the place to share your experience with others. There is hope, insight and encouragement in talking about the details, such as what it was like for one person to wake up without a breast or how ginger tea helped relieve someone's nausea after chemotherapy.

Talking about what we went through is a powerful way to support one another.

Biological therapy
Biological therapy stimulates the body’s immune system to fight disease and can lessen some of the side effects of cancer treatment.

Monoclonal antibodies, interferon, interleukin-2, and colony-stimulating factors are some types of biological therapy.

The side effects caused by biological therapy vary with the specific treatment. These problems can be severe, but they subside when the treatment stops. In general, symptoms include:

• Chills
• Bleeding
• Bruising
• Diarrhea
• Fever
• Loss of appetite
• Muscle aches
• Nausea
• Rashes
• Swelling
• Weakness
• Vomiting

Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is a chemical agent or drug administered to the body in order to destroy cancer cells and prevent new cells from emerging. Sometimes it is the only form of cancer treatment necessary. Treatments usually consist of more than one drug, which is referred to as combination chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy can be taken orally or, more commonly, by means of intravenous injection. Neoadjuvant therapy is when a doctor prescribes chemotherapy to shrink a tumor before trying surgery or radiation treatment. Chemotherapy that is used to destroy cells that linger after surgery or radiation is called adjuvant therapy.

Chemotherapy has many side effects because it targets multiple areas of the body simultaneously. Cells that replicate, or keep growing, like hair, nails, bone marrow and cells in the digestive system are also affected by the treatment.

Hormone therapy
Hormone therapy prevents cancer cells from using the hormones they need to grow. The treatment may include the use of drugs that stop the production of certain hormones or that change the way hormones work.

It also might involve surgery to remove organs that make hormones. For example, the ovaries might be removed to treat breast cancer or the testicles might be removed to treat prostate cancer.

Hormone therapy can cause a number of side effects, including:

• Blood clots
• Changes in appetite
• Fluid retention
• Hot flashes
• Nausea
• Tiredness
• Weight gain

Some people also experience problems with fertility after receiving it. The duration and intensity of the side effects varies according to the type of hormone therapy.

Radiation
Radiation is used to locally target cancer cells that are rapidly dividing inside the body. It is recommended for all kinds of solid tumors, whether in the brain, breast, lung or prostate.

It is also used to treat lymphoma and leukemia. The goal of radiation is to eliminate an entire tumor while it still occupies a confined area and limit the damage to nearby cells.

Treatments are administered by machines that pass ions through body tissue in order to kill or genetically alter targeted cells. Most normal healthy cells can recover after radiation treatment.

There are two main types of radiation: photon and particle. Each type delivers different amounts of energy emissions to the body and each varies in their side effects. Some treatments penetrate deeper into the tissues than others.

About half of all people diagnosed with cancer undergo radiation as part of their treatment process. Doctors spend time with each person developing a radiation plan that addresses their particular case of cancer.

Surgery
Surgery is the oldest method of treating cancer. Different cancer types require different types of surgery. Though surgeries have become less invasive in recent years, the process still can by physically and emotionally taxing.

Types of surgery include:

• Curative surgery is recommended when cancer cells are localized and may be removed almost entirely by operation
• Debulking surgery removes only part of a tumor, leaving radiation or chemotherapy to kill the remaining cancer cells. This surgery is common in situations where removing the entire tumor would damage nearby organs
• Diagnostic and staging surgeries help doctors evaluate how far cancer cells have spread
• Other types of surgery are performed to assist the treatment process or reduce the negative effects of treatment.

See also

• Shared stories
• Other types of surgery
• Clinical trials
• How to decide on a treatment