Chemo for beginners

I have only a general idea of what chemotherapy is (drugs that kill cancer and create a market for wigs) so I asked the doc this afternoon to help me understand the process. He did so using an analogy, which is the best way I understand things, yay!

Think of the person as a factory, and the cancer as lines of production in that factory that have been hijacked to produce a tumour instead. The chemotherapy drugs are commandos that have been sent into destroy those lines of production. However, the first course of chemotherapy can only hit a certain stage of production, therefore we need subsequent courses of treatment, or commando raids, to hit the different stages.

The nurse has brought the road map for our first four cycles of treatment. We'll be going weekly, with every third week being a big treatment with all three drugs until the second week of June. The doctors will do scans before each big treatment and then an evaluation at the end of the final cycle. The surgeon won't be consulting until we have one or two scans showing no additional shrinkage of the tumour.

It sounds like a plan!