Helping You Cope with Treatment Side Effects
- Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin, 70, experienced post-surgery complications, including an infection while treating prostate cancer, leaving him hospitalized for days.
- SurvivorNet experts stress no surgery is without possible side effects, and complications such as infection, blood clots, bleeding, and damage to internal organs are also possible. Since surgery comes with potential risks, it’s important to discuss the possible risks, complications, and side effects with your doctor.
- Lung cancer patients tend to experience some pain after surgery, thus requiring a longer recovery period. Thoracic surgery nurse Melissa Culligan tells SurvivorNet, “It’s critical after surgery and after any treatment that you keep active and keep your body in the best possible condition along the way.” Taking pain and sleep medications and managing your stress level is also crucial post-surgery.
- It’s important to note that while surgery is a part of the standard of care for certain cancer types, not every diagnosis will need surgery. Sometimes, surgery will come after you’ve already received another form of treatment, such as chemotherapy.
- Chemo side effects such as fatigue, hair loss, and gastrointestinal issues like nausea and constipation can all be managed. Please communicate with your care team regarding these side effects; they may have solutions such as anti-nausea medicine or will adjust your treatment regimen so it’s more tolerable.
For roughly two months, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s prostate cancer diagnosis has been all-consuming as he makes his return to the Pentagon. His cancer journey is fueling discussions surrounding the short and long-term side effects of cancer surgery and the risk of complications thereafter. Managing side effects and complications after treatment may be difficult, but your care team can help you get through it easier.
After discovering he had prostate cancer, Austin, 70, underwent a prostatectomy procedure late last year. During this procedure, the surgeon removes the entire prostate, along with some tissue around it, including the seminal vesicles that release fluid into the semen. Your doctor can perform this through a traditional open procedure called laparoscopic surgery with one large or several small incisions.
Read MoreHelping Patients Cope with Treatment Side Effects
Cancer Surgery and Possible Complications
SurvivorNet experts stress no surgery is without possible side effects, and complications such as infection, blood clots, bleeding, and damage to internal organs are also possible. Since surgery comes with potential risks, it’s important to discuss the possible risks, complications, and side effects with your doctor.In certain cancer treatments, robotic surgery is a surgical option that’s considered minimally invasive. In ovarian cancer, for example, robotic-assisted surgery tends to be more precise and causes less blood loss than traditional ovarian cancer surgery.
WATCH: Possible Complications from Robotic Assisted Surgery
While the name suggests that the surgery is automated through robots or artificial intelligence, this is somewhat misleading. “I sometimes think of it as a misnomer,” says Dr. Albert Pisani, a gynecologic oncologist at Sutter Bay Medical Foundation in the Bay Area of California. “The robotic instrumentation is just a tool that the surgeon uses to control the laparoscopic instruments.”
It’s important to remember that the human surgeon, not a robot, controls the instruments. The tools are called “robotic” because they are designed to operate like a human hand within the body.
Robotic surgery is performed through a series of small incisions, usually around five in total, of less than a centimeter each. This makes the procedures significantly less invasive than open surgery.
According to Dr. Pisani, “Side effects or complications for robotic surgery are pretty much the same types of complications that you can get with open surgery but occur less frequently.”
Some risks are unique to robotic surgery, such as damaging internal organs through the small entry points.
Another cancer surgery that’s known to be challenging is lung cancer. Specific details, including the maturity, size, and origins of your lung cancer, influence the surgery. A wedge resection is an option if the tumor is small and located on the outside of the lung. In this procedure, your surgeon removes a piece of the lung (in the shape of a wedge), and lung function is unaffected. Conversely, a lobectomy or a segmentectomy involves the removal of a certain segment of the lung (a lobe). During a pneumonectomy, however, the entire lung is removed.
Lung cancer patients tend to experience some pain after surgery, thus requiring a longer recovery period.
WATCH: Managing Pain and Discomfort after Lung Cancer Surgery
Melissa Culligan, a thoracic surgery nurse at the University of Maryland Medical Center, says it’s important for lung cancer patients to do their best to “stay active” after surgery.
“It’s critical after surgery and after any treatment that you keep active and keep your body in the best possible condition along the way,” Culligan told SurvivorNet.
“Managing pain after surgery is difficult once you get home… As you become more active, your pain may increase a little bit, but that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong. It just means you may need to take more pain medicine,” Culligan adds.
Culligan says she has worked with lung cancer patients for 30 years. She says sometimes, after surgery, sleeping is difficult. She suggests sleeping medications and stress management are helpful tools to help you cope as the pain eventually subsides.
Managing Treatment Side Effects
It’s important to note that while surgery is a part of the standard of care for certain cancer types, not every diagnosis will need surgery. Sometimes, surgery will come after you’ve already received another form of treatment, such as chemotherapy.
Side effects of chemo are well-documented. They may include:
- Fatigue
- Hair loss
- Gastrointestinal issues like nausea and constipation
- Neuropathy
“Most patients typically get a lot of fatigue, muscle aches, and joint pain in that first 24 to 48 hours after chemotherapy,” says Dr. Lynn Parker, gynecologic oncologist at Norton Cancer Institute. “And then [we] can see some decrease in blood counts, so fatigue again around ten days or so after the chemotherapy is given.”
To help manage some of these common side effects, SurvivorNet experts recommend managing your stress level and your physical activity. If you’re feeling tired and fatigued, slow down. While you shouldn’t push yourself if you’re not feeling well, doctors say it’s important to try and incorporate some light physical activity, like walking, into your day. Exercise doesn’t just help manage fatigue; it can help you sleep and keep you in better shape when you’re done with treatment. Plus, walking isn’t just good for your body; the sunlight and fresh air can help boost your mood.
Hair loss is a well-known side effect of cancer treatment that carries with it a barrage of emotions. Taxol is the drug that causes hair loss, but your hair “should grow back, typically a few months after chemotherapy is completed,” Dr. Parker says.
To help ease the impact of hair loss, you might want to cut your hair very short or even shave your head before your hair starts falling out. If you’re considering buying a wig, buy it before your treatment starts or soon after. Some women opt to try cold caps to at least slow the thinning. The caps work by constricting the blood in the scalp, preventing some chemotherapy drugs from penetrating the scalp and reaching the hair follicles. However, they can be very uncomfortable and cause headaches due to the extreme cold, so many women opt for wigs or scarves.
WATCH: Managing Chemo Side Effects
Diarrhea and nausea are other common chemo side effects that can make your day multiple times worse.
“Constipation is very common after chemotherapy, and the timing I hear from patients is typically in the first few days after [a] chemotherapy [infusion]. Knowing that we can prepare by having them take a stool softener or make dietary adjustments, hydrating well. Also, being active helps keep your bowels functioning,” says Dr. Parker.
Your doctor can help you manage some of these side effects. Resorting to ginger tea can help soothe an uneasy stomach. Anti-nausea medication is an option to ease the queasy feeling that precedes vomiting.
“There are wonderful things we can do now to try to keep people doing well. We give some pre-medication IV medications that are given prior to the infusion of chemotherapy on the day of treatment,” says Dr. Parker. “I typically have patients take something for acute nausea, whether they need it or not, in the first 24 to 48 hours after chemotherapy. Then I tend to use a low-dose steroid for about three days after chemo, to prevent delayed nausea. Usually, that combination does a really wonderful job at preventing nausea and vomiting.”
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