Leukaemia is a fairly common and very serious form of cancer. Leukaemia is a type of cancer where your body produces abnormal and cancerous white blood cells. This form of cancer starts in the bone marrow, where white blood cells are developed. Because leukaemia is a cancer of the blood and blood travels throughout the body, it can spread quickly to various organs.
Because of how dangerous leukaemia is and how quickly it can spread, it’s important to seek treatment immediately. If you can stop leukaemia before it spreads, you have a much better chance of making a full recovery. Here are some of the best and most common treatment options.
As with most forms of cancer, chemotherapy is often the most recommended treatment for leukaemia. Chemotherapy involves dosing your body with chemicals that find and kill cancer cells. It is available in the form of a pill, injection, or via an IV.
While chemotherapy is one of the most effective treatments for leukaemia, it has many unwanted side effects. The chemicals that are killing cancer cells are also hurting other parts of your body. This can result in nausea, a weakened immune system, vomiting, and much more.
Radiation therapy is often administered in conjunction with chemotherapy. Radiation therapy sends target rays into your body that break down and kill cancer cells. You can opt for radiation therapy that targets a specific part of the body or radiation therapy that douses your whole body in radiation.
Either way, this effective treatment has side effects similar to chemotherapy. This includes headaches, hair loss, fatigue, nausea, and vomiting, among others.
One of the detrimental effects that leukaemia has on you is that it weakens your immune system. As such, one of the ways to fight back against it is to receive immune-boosting drugs. These drugs strengthen your immune system in their fight against cancer and help negate the white blood cells that are abnormal. Additionally, while immunotherapy has some side effects, they are not as significant as the unwanted side effects of radiation and chemotherapy.
Targeted therapy is one of the newer leukaemia treatments available. Rather than attacking the cancer cell as a whole, as with chemo and radiation, targeted therapy attacks individual parts of the cancer cells. This breaks the cancer cells down from the inside out and destroys them. While targeted therapy is less damaging to other cells in your body, it also is not as effective as chemotherapy and radiation.
Because your bone marrow is creating abnormal white blood cells that are causing your leukaemia, it will be necessary to receive a bone marrow transplant. This transplant will replace your defective bone marrow with healthy, cancer-free cells. It’s possible to use your own stem cells if you have enough healthy ones remaining, or you can receive stem cells from a donor.
Because of the type of cancer that leukaemia is, surgery typically is not an option unless the cancer spreads to your organs. When that happens, however, your leukaemia will be much more difficult to cure, and your prognosis may not be good. Therefore, it is important to visit your doctor if you suspect that you have leukaemia so that you can start treatment immediately.