nausea-and-vomiting

Some people feel sick, or are sick, before a chemotherapy session, set off by the hospital or a smell: a learned reaction to sickness in earlier cycles. The best protection is good anti-sickness medicine from the first cycle. If it happens, tell your team: relaxation training helps, and a calming tablet such as lorazepam the night before and on the morning of treatment can be offered.

Sickness from chemotherapy is now largely preventable. The anti-sickness medicines you are given depend on how likely your chemotherapy is to cause sickness: for the strongest regimens that is four medicines before treatment and some for the days after, for the mildest none at all. If you are still sick, tell your team: there is a next step.

In advanced cancer, nausea and vomiting often have a cause that can be found and treated, such as constipation, a high calcium level, a medicine, or a blocked bowel. Your team will look for the cause, stop medicines that may worsen it, and choose an anti-sickness medicine that suits it, under the skin or by a small pump if tablets will not stay down. Say if it is not improving.

How likely a child's chemotherapy is to cause sickness decides which anti-sickness medicines they get, given before the chemotherapy, not after the child is sick. The strongest chemotherapy gets three medicines together. If a child is still sick, the team steps up the medicines straight away and for the next cycle, because sickness that is not controlled makes the next cycle worse.