eli5: Why cant they anesthetize chemo patients so they don’t feel the pain from chemotherapy?
In: Biology
The pain usually comes after they leave. It makes you extremely sick because of the way it works. The worst of those effects aren’t felt until well after the person has left the hospital.
So unless they want to be knocked out 24/7, pain and discomfort is just an inevitability.
You also have to monitor for side effects and treat them… you can’t treat a nauseous patient if they’re anesthetized and then they’ll end up vomiting and aspirating… Or if they have an allergic reaction it could get to the point where their throat closes instead of catching it at the stage of itching or coughing
Because 90% of the issues with chemo is the side effects including nausea, loss of appetite and vomiting. So waking up from anesthesia and feeling nauseous is a bad mix.
I’ve had chemo, although not as much as cancer or leukemia patients and the chemo being injected doesn’t hurt, in most cases it’s like most intravenous treatments (I had some intravenous treatments that actually hurt being injected but that’s a whole other story). What hurts is the side/ after effects that follow which anesthesia obviously cannot help with.
In 40 or so chemo infusions I’ve not had any pain, and the anti emetics have gotten me through without vomiting once.
After the first few sessions of frontline I had them change the antihistamines to a non drowsy type so I could drive myself to and from the hospital.
We all cope differently with the drugs, and it would be difficult to know someone was having a bad reaction to a drug if they weren’t awake, you would need an anesthesiologist on hand for every patient, my clinic has 20 chemo chairs to staff
I went through chemo last year. Not a lot of pain from the chemo but more from the side effects. I expected the nausea, but having the skin constantly peeling off of my palms and soles was a constant source of pain. Walking was painful, as was picking anything up. Losing all that skin caused an odd problem at work – since my fingerprints had disappeared I couldn’t clock in/out at work because we used a biometric scanner.
I have a bone disease and my last dose of zoledronic acid was this past August. I’m not finished, but that drug is aggressive enough that I can only have it five times and then they have to switch to something else.
I felt fine after my first dose though. I actually went to a museum and dinner later on in the same day. Then I got home and slept for 27 hours. I was completely unprepared for what this drug was about to do to me.
After I woke up I felt terrible. Everything hurt. Constant, dull aches all over. Sharp, stabbing, and searing pains in my spine every time I moved (the bone disease is primarily there). It felt like I had been hit by a car (I’ve been hit by a car as well so I know exactly how much that sucks). For the first month or so all of my normal pain is amplified.
Another big side effect I was blindsided by was that, for whatever reason, it completely saps all my strength and energy. I struggle to walk for more than about 45 consecutive minutes (I’ve pushed to around an hour and a half a few times but paid dearly after every one). After I’m done with a short walk I usually fall asleep for a few hours because there’s just no energy left.
As much as I would love to not be awake for all of this, that’s not really an option.
I was on Arsenic Trioxide and All-Trans Retinoic Acid for Acute Promyeloytic Leukaemia. As others have said, it’s not exactly painful at the time (your experience may vary), but the longer term side effects are what bother you.
Oddly enough the ATRA caused the worst side effects I had REALLY bad headaches caused by the ATRA increasing my intercranial pressure. It also caused my skin to dry out and become really sensitive.
The only issue I personally had during actual treatment (excluding my induction treatment when I was very unwell) was it messed with my sense of taste, so eating during my infusion was always a bad idea.
What are they going to do? Anesthetize you for months?
Chemo is basically poison that kills cancer cells, but also kills normal cells along the way. The meds don’t really cause acute pain. It is just your body reacting to getting poisoned.
Latest Answers