Are There Alternative Lymphoma Treatments?

The most common treatments for lymphoma are chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy. These can help Lymphoma in many ways. However, the type of treatment you need will depend on the stage of cancer your body may be in. Sometimes a bone marrow transplant or stem cell transplant will help, but not always needed.

New medications are being researched everyday to find faster and easier ways to treat lymphoma. It is treatable and many go on to live for years after being diagnosis with lymphoma. Talking to your doctor about all the treatments that are available is the best way to find out what will work for you. They will know the latest drug developments that are readily available.

Chemotherapy is used with you have rapid growing tumors or cells. These treatments are preformed in the hospital and give through IV. They are to attach and destroy the tumor or to stop the growth of the tumor. It may also kill off some of your good cells as well, for these drugs are very strong. You can experience extreme weakness for your body is going through many changes and not having the energy or time to rebuild its immunity. You may loss your hair as well. These drugs do work, but they will leave you feeling sick and weak. It’s part of the treatment in order to get all the bad cells out of your body, so you can start producing normal cells.

Radiation is the use of high doses of x-ray to kill and destroy cancer cells. Sometimes this is combined with chemotherapy to increase the killing power of those cells. They can concentrate on one area of the body, wherever your tumor maybe and make sure to get that one spot with the radiation.

You also have Immunotherapy which is using the bodies own defenses to fight off the cancer. In other words it’s like using many different vaccines, like you would give to a new born so they can fight off chicken pox. Building up your bodies antibodies with these medications to fight off the cancer cells is important. This is something that is being tried and tested, but is still in experimental stage right now.

There are options available and surgery may end up being one of them. To do a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. They will have to find a donor that matches up with you and harvest good cells from them. They implant them into you. That is the shortest way to explain the process. It can take a long time to find a donor. Your doctor will be better able to take you through each step in the process so you fully understand what is going to happen.

Cancer is something that many have to deal with everyday of their lives. It can be treatable and given the right treatments you can be in remission for years. Cancer doesn't ever go away. There is always that chance that it will come back, but being in remission for twenty years is always a good thing. Talk with your doctor about what is the best plan of action for you.