If your doctor has determined that chemotherapy is the best course of treatment for your cancer, you can be assured that every effort is made to make you comfortable in CentraState’s newly expanded Jean Mehr Infusion Therapy Center. In this relaxing space, you may also receive other treatments related to chemotherapy, enabling you to go to just one outpatient center for your ongoing treatments. Our goal is to help you experience the comfort of community-based cancer care close to home.

 

The registered pharmacists at CentraState are dedicated to your safety and make sure all medicines are stored and prepared in an immaculate and sterile environment. They make sure there are no potential drug interactions with other medicines you may be taking. And they collaborate with your medical and nursing team, each of whom has credentials in chemotherapy to make sure that your medicine is administered properly every time.

 

Remember, your doctor and nurse and other members of your health care team are there to help you with any fears or concerns you may have. Talk with them, and consider also speaking with a social worker who is specially trained to help you or a family member manage and cope.

 

Chemotherapy is known as systemic therapy because the medicine goes through your whole body by way of your bloodstream. Chemotherapy weakens or destroys cancer cells in the body. Chemotherapy, or chemo, is given intravenously through an IV; this is also known as infusion therapy. Sometimes instead of an IV in your vein, a port (a small disc) is inserted temporarily under the skin in your chest. A thin tube, or catheter, attached to the port carries the medicine into a vein. Chemotherapy can also be given orally as a pill.

 

Chemotherapy may be used as the primary treatment for fighting cancer, but it is often used with other treatments such as surgery, radiation oncology, or biological therapy.

 

Your oncologist may want you to have chemotherapy to may make a tumor smaller before surgery or radiation therapy. Or you may have chemotherapy after cancer to destroy any remaining cancer cells. Chemotherapy may also help radiation therapy and biological therapy work better, or it may be used to destroy cancer that has spread to other parts of your body (metastatic cancer), or cells that have come back (recurrent cancer).

 

Remember, at CentraState's Cancer Center we believe that knowledge is power. The more you learn about your cancer and its treatment, the better you may feel when you know what to expect.