Chemotherapy is the use of special drugs to kill cancer cells.

The drugs are most commonly given by mouth or injection and are absortbed into the blood, to travel around the body and reach all the cancer cells, wherever they are located.

Often a combination of drugs are used to maximised the destruction of cancer cells.

Chemotherapy treatemnts are usually given in time limited courses with rest periods in between to allow your body to recover.

If chemotherapy can eventually kill all the cancer cells, the cancer is in remission and potentially curable.

Julie started her Chemotherapy cycle on the 22nd April, 2005 at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Her treatment consisted of two different chemotherapy drugs, both given at three week intervals and both having four cycles each.

The first cycle of chemotherapy was called AC which included:

Intravenous Doxorubicin which is given over 5 minutes plus
Intravenous Cyclophosphamide given at 100mg a minute

And the second was called Paclitaxel which included:

Intraveneous Paclitaxel which was given over three hours.

About 2 weeks after her first chemotherapy treatment, Julie started losing her hair. We sat in the bath for about two hours shaving her golden locks from her head. She didn't want people seeing her lose all her hair but was quite comfortable being bald.

Obviously there are side effects to having chemotherapy and luckily for Julie she only experienced a few of them: tiredness, forgetfulness, grumpyness and the most obvious, hair loss.

Thanks to everyone who knitted or made her a beanie.