What can you tell me about cancer/treatment?

So I want to know more about:

between diagnosis and treatment, do you just stay in the hospital or go home?
and once you start chemotherapy, how much time is spent in the hospital/at home?
How much could my character still go to school/act normal before he was too sick to attend/look healthy?
Any onther information you can tell me would be fantastic!

Also, if you want more specific:

He is Male,
Seventeen/Eighteen
Gets Diagnosed with Osteosarcoma (bone cancer) after he breaks his leg.

Thanks!

My mom started chemo Friday for breast cancer. You don't stay at the hospital just because you were diagnosed. Hospital stays are excruciatingly expensive (thousands of dollars a day) and no insurance will pay for it if there's not a damn good reason to be there. They send you home as soon as they're able, in almost all cases.

A diagnosis just means you're going to be scheduled for treatment. It doesn't mean you're suddenly dying and have to be hospitalized. Nothing changes the day after any cancer diagnosis, except the fact you know something's wrong.

Depending on the cancer, he might spend very little time in the hospital. My mom has stage 1 aggressive breast cancer. She was in the hospital for about 12 hours for the lumpectomy (removal of the actual cancer) and went home. Took her about 5 days to recover enough to drive safely home, so she stayed with me.

About a month later, she's starting chemo. Chemo's a 5 hour or so sit in the hospital, then you go home. You'll be tired and nauseated, but functional. Your character may very well be able to attend school pretty regularly, although after chemo treatments he may stay home because of risk of infection, since chemo wipes out your immune system. She hasn't worked in a day or two, but will be going back today.

Note that he might not even go bald; not everyone does. I don't have any experience with radiation nor more severe cancers, since my mom isn't to that point in her treatment yet, and while her cancer's aggressive, it's been fairly easy to treat. Someone else can probably give you better info about radiation. :)

I've a relative, now 30, who was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer when he was 12.
>>between diagnosis and treatment, do you just stay in the hospital or go home? He went home.

>>once you start chemotherapy, how much time is spent in the hospital/at home? If I remember correctly, he would either be in the hospital just for the duration of the chemo or he would go home the next day.

>>How much could my character still go to school/act normal before he was too sick to attend/look healthy? My relative's parents tried to keep things as normal for him as possible. They talked to his teachers/administration of his school, explained the situation, and worked out a plan. He actually graduated with his class. Lots of stress, but it was important to them.
the school had a rule...no hats. But they made an exception of my relative while he was bald and going through chemo.
>>Any onther information you can tell me would be fantastic!

Chemo made him sick - he'd just start feeling better from the last round of chemo when it was time for the next. He lost all his hair - it was white-ish blond and when it grew back, it came is dirty blonde.
If you were sick, you couldn't be around him (unless you wore a mask and even then they preferred you not be around.
We sent care packages and visited in hospital & at home to keep him cheered up. He often felt depressed and wished he would die.
He's experienced collapsed lungs, radiation treatment, many ambulance trips to the ER - and is now alive, in remission and living life to the fullest.

Something to keep in mind...does your character have siblings? They are impacted as greatly as the sick child. Their life is turned upside down too. They're worried, scared, resentful and even a little jealous, don't understand what's going on, miss mom and dad.

I will say...when my relative was going through this trial, he was THE bravest young man I've ever known. At the time there was a young man in the news who ran away from home because he didn't want to do chemo anymore. Everyone called him brave. I disagreed then and still do. There's no courage in running away. Courage is enduring the treatments and holding onto a sliver of hope at the end of the day. That's my soapbox. Done now.

That it sucks.

Between diagnosis and treatment, do you just stay in the hospital or go home?

Between my diagnosis and the beginning of my treatment there was about a month I think (Diagnosed somewhere around the 16th/17th of December 2010 and began treatment round about the 16th of January 2011) but that month was spent rushing up and down to London for meetings with my oncologist. But I did spend that time at home

Once you start chemotherapy, how much time is spent in the hospital/at home?

My course of treatment worked in three week cycles. One week I would be going into hospital every day for 6 hours of treatment. Then the next two weeks I would just be going in on Mondays for two hours of treatment. I went home every day though.

How much could my character still go to school/act normal before he was too sick to attend/look healthy?

Well to kick off I would say that "act normal" is just the tinyest bit offensive. You spend nine weeks having radioactive chemicals pumped into your arm for several hours a day and the rest of the time throwing up. See how normal you are after all that. Sometimes just getting up in the morning was a bloody challenge.

*gets off soapbox*

I think I spent about a week to two weeks in school between January and March (beginning and end of my treatment) if I tot up the collective days. I tried to go as often as I could but I was either sick or just tired so largely I didn't. Which was a bit of a pain as I was in the middle of my A-Levels but hey ho.

It all depends how spread out his treatment was. I had a a very short treatment cycle but they hit me with a lot in the nine week period. If it was once a week over 6 months he might be able to go quite regularly.

Any onther information you can tell me would be fantastic!

You get sick a lot. In my case this was combined with an enchanced appetite (damn steroids) so I'd eat like a horse then throw it all up again. I also started losing my hair so I ended up having it all shaved off to save time.

Also treatment is different for everyone. Like I said I was having a very short but strong chemo cycle for testicular cancer for which there is a fairly high recovery rate. But I saw people who were going through years worth of treatment.

I looked like a movie star compared to them.

I have no experience with cancer except to say that my grandfather had skin and lung cancer when he died (though technically he did not die *of* the cancer) but that was years ago and I'm still not sure of the specifics. That being said, something I thought might be useful to you is The Fault in Our Stars, the fantastic new book by John Green that I am currently rereading. It features a seventeen-year-old boy with osteosarcoma, and really explains what it's like to be a teenager living and dying of cancer.

Hope this helps,
Lizzy

I mean no offense to most of the people here, but you really can't generalize cancer treatments. Someone with AML will be treated a whole lot differently than someone with CLL, who will be treated differently than someone with breast or prostate cancer.

Generally, people aren't diagnosed with cancers in the hospital; they're diagnosed in an outpatient setting, and then referred to an oncologist to discuss options. For osteosarcoma, there will likely be some surgery involved, followed by chemotherapy, depending on the location of the tumor.

http://www.mayoclinic.org/osteosarcoma/treatment.html

When I had reason to walk through a cancer treatment center recently, I glimpsed a table in the waiting room with a half finished puzzle. Apparently it's a common courtesy to help patients/friends/relatives kill time, but somehow it was like a punch in the gut for me, bringing back my dad's radiation & chemo treatments three years ago. All the uncertainty, the strain of being cheerful, watching him grow thinner, tireder, more vague with the drugs...
Fortunately he is healthy now. But for a touch of authenticity, make sure you have puzzles in the waiting room!