chemotherapy Options

[recycle]

yesterday i was told by a really good friend that he has cancer. he lost his hair and nails cos of chemotherapy. i really want to support him but to do so i need to understand what is really cancer and what is chemotherapy.
i searched the internet but everything is too complicated english for me. can someone do me the favour and simplified any info about this here?

thank u

[phonex98]

I saw the title of this post and i was going to come in here to tell you that you should probabably do your own reasearch to best help you understand chemo... but since the documents you have come across are too technical i will try.

Cancer: Some process in a cell has gone wrong, and now the cell is growing out of control. They no longer preform their function, and only serve to grow larger and create more cancerous cells. For example, your heart is made up of thousands of cells. If one of those cells were to get cancer IT would stop doing heart tasks, and just grow, make more cancerous cells and grow more. Eventually it will grow so large it will inhibit function of the heart, or perhaps spread through the blood stream. Keep in mind this is an EXAMPLE. The cancer your friend is probably somewhere else, and it may be a type of cancer in which doctors can easily remove.

Chemotherapy: Used mostly when doctors have already tried to remove a cancer or it is too dangerous to try and remove the cancer (perhaps if it i deep in the brain. Chemo, to the best of my knowledge, involves 'poisoing' the body, in hopes that it will kill the cancerous cells. As you can see it also causes damage to his normal cells (hair and fingernails fall out), but it is a sort of "last step".

Hope that was simple enough for you. If you have more questions, i can answer them later today, or im sure someone else on the board can.