hows does chemo work against the cancer ?

Thank you Mark and Peter, for exposing the wacko answers. Some people…there’s a conspiracy around every tumor. I just got through my treatments. 7 months of chemo and my nails never looked better and my hair is nice and thick and shiny. My gums didn’t bleed. I didn’t even get a cavity. I didn’t throw up and my bloodwork was always completely normal…all through my chemo. I get an mri every 2 months and no signs of cancer returning. Must’ve been all that "faith" in the white coats. It was. Faith that they knew what they were taught, with their many years of school and residency.

Chemotherapy is based on a collection of very severe poisons that kill fast dividing cells. Since cancer cells are fast dividing the chemo poisons generally kill off the cancer cells.
Trouble is it’s non discriminatory which means it kills off heaps of other fast dividing cells in the body which is why you lose your hair, your gums bleed, your stomach and colon cannot keep anything down and it makes every bone in your body ache as it plays havoc with bone marrow. As the bone marrow produces white cells which are the basis of your immune system, your immune system collapses and you become open to life threatening infections. google "chemotherapy" – it tells you all this and more. And yes – the other reply was right, other small colonies of cancer cells can and often do form elsewhere in the body and become resistant to further chemotherapy. If they come back and form secondary cancers – then the only option is palliative care – you are eventually told to go home and "get your life in order".
Welcome to the wonderful world of allopathic cancer care.
Yes – there is another way but most contributors to these forums would call it "quackery". when it is actually the depersonalising brutality that is chemotherapy that is pure quackery.

You have received some horrific answers so far and while they each contain a grain of truth, they also focus on the down side of chemotherapy ignoring the up side. Chemotherapy does, in fact, kill fast growing cells which cancer cells and hair cells are as well as many other cells in the body. And, chemo does reduce the bodies ability to fight infection. However, there are many cancers that cannot be reached and therefor treated by any other means such as surgery or radiation. So called "homeopathic" therapies when used to the exclusion of scientifically proven therapies are a sentence of death. What all your other answers failed to mention is that chemotherapy has saved countless lives or at a very minimum provided many years of remission from cancer that could not have been provided in any other way. As far as fighting cancer in other ways? I had two forms of radiation for mine since chemo was deemed ineffective against it and surgery wasn’t an option due to it’s location. The radiation has worked for me so far. Surgery is an option for many but since even one stray "rogue" cell escaping the surgery can start the cancer up all over again, chemo is often used in conjunction with it to get those stray cells.

Chemo kills ALL rapidly reproducing cells. The hope is that, after treatment, the normal cells will resume reproducing and the cancerous ones won’t. That is why hair falls out, nails don’t grow, females don’t ovulate, etc,etc.

As explained above going through chemotherapy is tough because it does not only destroy cancer cells but also some types of normal cells. However one should remember (ans focus on) that full recovery is possible and does happen often. On http://anaximperator.wordpress.com/about-you/ there is a personal account of one experience.