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How are you preparing for it?

Answer
By God's Grace none in our family is starting Chemo now. But we had enough and have the experience. To educate you I give below how to prepare for Chemotherapy -

Before You Begin Chemo for Breast Cancer-

Your life, with all its joy, complications, and small annoyances, will go on regardless of your chemotherapy treatments. But it's a good idea to take care of a few detailsâmedical and personalâbefore you get started.

Get a complete dental checkup and cleaning. The risk of infection is greater during chemotherapy, so you'll want to take care of your teeth before you begin. If your doctor requests any heart studies (like an echocardiogram), get those, too.

Chemotherapy can also make your Pap smear (the screening test for cervical cancer) abnormal. See if your doctor will do your Pap smear before you start chemotherapy. The last thing you need when you've gone through treatment for breast cancer is another abnormal test result!

With few exceptions, chemotherapy will cause your hair to fall out, a condition called alopecia. Some medications cause partial hair loss, and some cause complete hair loss. To prepare for hair loss, read about wigs, turbans, hats, scarves, or just going bald in our Hair, Skin, and Nails section.

Make arrangements for extra help around the houseâcleaning, car pooling, and grocery shopping can be delegated to others for a while.

Talk to your family and friends, and help prepare them for your treatment.

Find a support group. Your oncology nurse can help you. Be sure to check out the Community Knowledge Exchange on breastcancer.org to connect with others dealing with the same issues. It's been shown that support groups (either in person or online) boost quality of life and may ease anxiety and depression.

Review with your doctor or nurse what you should eat or drink on the day of your treatment. Some drugs have restrictions and requirements; others do not.

Do something you've been meaning to do but keep putting offâgoing to see a new movie, having dinner at a special restaurant, taking a walk with just you and the kids.-

No chemo hair loss? is it possible?

My mother has been claiming she has some mysterious life threatening disease for years now, but she has never made it clear what she has. She has a giant cocktail of prescriptions that she takes that she never talks about what they're for. Recently she's been claiming she's been undergoing chemo for 4-5 months but she's hasn't lost ANY HAIR (She has waist length hair also).

Is it possible to not loose any hair during chemo?

This may be the one lie that we can use to get her to admit she's faking it.

Answer
I'm not going to comment on whether there is a faked illness here ... I'll just stick to the chemo hair loss question. I was treated with 8 months worth of ABVD (Adriamycin, Bleomycin, Vinblastine, & Dacarbazine) chemotherapy for Hodgkin's Disease and I finished treatment with enough hair to pull back into a ponytail. Other Hodgkin's patients lose every bit of hair they have with ABVD.

(By the way, I've been in remission for over a year. I had stage IV disease at diagnosis and if ABVD didn't work, I wouldn't be here typing this right now.)

Some chemo regimens will cause nearly 100% hair loss. Others rarely cause hair loss. Some others are like ABVD and commonly cause hair loss in most people, but some people only get some thinning like I did.

There is a pretty good discussion here:

http://www.caring.com/articles/chemotherapy-drugs-and-hair-loss

and here:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hair-loss/CA00037

This site is breast cancer oriented but explains why hair loss happens:

http://www.breastcancer.org/tips/hair_skin_nails/hair_loss.jsp

There is an excellent list of common chemo drugs here:

http://www.chemocare.com/bio/

You can look up drugs and learn whether hair loss is a common side effect. For example, it is a common side effect with Adriamycin. It is not as common a side effect with say Gemzar.