Does chemotherapy affect motor skills?

I need help with this, please. I can't really carry on with my piece until I get this ironed out.

My instinct is no, he wouldn't be able to write a letter. I don't think it's so much a function of decreased motor function as general muscle weakness and fatigue though. I'm not sure how old the character is, but I was living with a woman who's boyfriend's son had advanced lymphocitic leukemia. They gave him small treatments of chemotherapy, but the cancer just wasn't dying, so they gave him a final, full blast of chemotherapy in a last ditch effort to save him (they didn't want to initially because there was a high chance that in the event it made him cancer free, he might die of the chemotherapy anyway). Afterward he was far too weak to feed himself, much less write a letter.

For all I know, it could vary from person to person, but if your character's friend was about to die then I'd have him dictate the letter to be on the safe side.

2006 - Utter Failure - 500 words
2007 - Silver or Lead - 47 000 words
2008 - Memento Mori - 59 000 words
2009 - Feral - working on it

it depends on the specific chemotherapy drugs being used, and the dosages. I would agree with the above comments that your character would be more fatigued and generally weakened, and certainly less able to concentrate. however, if he was near the final stages of his life, and the drug dosages were being increased in an attempt to save him, then it would probably take a great effort for him to write a legible, coherent letter. although by that point it might be difficult for him to dictate a letter as well - probably couldn't do it all at once. chemo really wears the patient out - most end up sleeping, if possible, partly to make the time pass faster and partly because they simply don't have any energy to do anything else. so if he did dictate a letter, I'm guessing he would have to do it in installments, stopping when he got too exhausted.

as far as the decision to stop treatment, I don't know for certain but I would guess it's the family's choice. if your character has no family, then perhaps it would be his own choice, upon consultation with his doctors. if there is no longer any hope for improvement, why continue to go through chemotherapy and prolong the pain? but as I said, I'm not sure - that is just my personal guess based on experiences I've had.

hope that helped somewhat.

"We are basically dependent beings: one upon another, and each on a world that is not of our making." --Matthew B. Crawford

When my mom underwent chemo she lost fine motor skills even before she got too tired for normal activities. The chemo made her fingers go numb, she couldn't even tie her shoes let alone write with a pen or pencil. And treatment usually stops either a.) when all courses (normal and experimental) of chemo have failed to have an effect or b.) The patient (or in case of a patient unable to make choices) decides that they have had enough and their quality of life isn't worth the quantity the chemo may be giving. But if your question is how long people live after chemo has failed it really depends on the person. With my mom it was about 3 weeks. I've known other people who have survived a year or more and some who went into remission without chemo.

If he's a week from dying of cancer, he's probably not strong enough to sit up and write no matter whether he's having chemotherapy or not. When I had chemo, it didn't touch my motor skills (I won Nano for the first time because it gave me so much writing time!) but obviously, there are so many different types of chemo drugs and I'm only familiar with the ones I was on.

When my grandma was going through chemo for leukemia, she actually was hallucinating. She said someone came and hung a sack of potatoes on her IV and forced her to eat them. I know this isn't the question you asked, but I can tell you it can certainly affect the mind. This was pretty close to before she died, though, so their might have been other factors at play. I was only eight then so I can't remember a lot of it. I do know that they discovered the cancer because she had persistant bruising on her legs, and when she went to the doctor's, they dismissed it, but she forced them to give her a blood test. A few days later, they called her in the middle of the night to tell her to get to the emergency room. They wouldn't have even known she had cancer if she hadn't insisted on the test. I don't know if you can use any of this or not, but it might help you have a little more insight into the disease when writing about the friend.

NaNo 2009 ~ Xander ~ Status: Finished and praising God that I did!