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Chemotherapy
What chemotherapy is
Chemotherapy means drug treatment. In cancer treatment, the term chemotherapy means treatment with cell killing (cytotoxic) drugs. Chemotherapy affects production of white blood cells in the bone marrow. Normally white blood cells help fight off infection.

Chemotherapy and infection
After chemotherapy, if your white blood cells are low, you are more likely to get infections. Any infection can also worsen more quickly. A trivial infection could become life threatening within hours if it isn’t treated.

Your chemotherapy nurse will tell you about the symptoms of infection to look out for, and when you need to call the doctor or go back to the hospital.

Not all chemotherapy drugs affect your bone marrow and increase the risk of infection. But many do. It depends on:

which drug you have
the dose of the drug – the higher the dose the more likely it is to affect your bone marrow
your age – chemotherapy is more likely to affect your bone marrow function if you are elderly
your general health
the type and stage of your cancer
When you are most at risk
These effects on your bone marrow usually begin around 7 to 10 days after each treatment and return to normal between 21 and 28 days.

When your white blood cell count is at its lowest you can feel very tired (fatigued). Some people also say they feel depressed. This can be really hard to deal with and make you wonder if you really want to go on with your treatment.

Things should improve and you will start to feel better again before your next treatment, as your blood counts rise. Unfortunately, they'll go down again after each treatment. But once your treatment is finished your blood cell counts will remain at normal levels.

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