Chemotherapy reduces bone marrow's ability to produce red blood cells, which makes chemotherapy patients more likely to become anemic. Symptoms of anemia include extreme weakness, shortness of breath, and dizziness or fainting, making physical and mental fatigue inevitable. Furthermore, women who suffered from fatigue said that fatigue interferes with their lives more than any other treatment-related side effect. Fatigue weighs heavily on the overall quality of life, and becomes an obstacle to maintaining daily activities. Although everyone understands occasional exhaustion, cancer related fatigue sufferers are exhausted on a larger scale and for longer periods of time.
Many patients report a total loss of energy, loss of concentration, and insomnia.
Simple tasks like showering, bathing a child, or just getting up to answer the telephone may seem equivalent to an aerobic workout for healthy individuals. While surveys conclude that women report that the effects of fatigue outweigh other cancer-related ailments like pain, nausea, and depression, it often goes unrecognized or untreated. Severe fatigue is positively correlated with missed workdays, intimacy problems, and even depression. Unfortunately, many patients find it difficult to communicate the severity of their fatigue to their doctors, and doctors rarely ask patients whether or not they are experiencing fatigue as a side effect of their cancer treatment. In the few cases that they do, Doctors tend to give nonspecific responses to this ailment.