Cancer and . . . whatwasIgoingtosayagain?

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but it's just kept slipping my mind.  

Most people know that chemo makes you feel yucky.  Nausea, vomitting, fatigue, hair loss are all famous results of the Big Drip and things people ask me about.  Here's a lesser-known joy of cancer treatment: Chemobrain. 

Studies have shown that people undergoing chemotherapy experience mild loss of memory and concentration.  It's in the literature, it's something the oncology nurses explain when going over the Long List of Side Effects at the beginning of treatment, and it's another one of those things that just creeps up on you so gradually that you don't really notice it for a while and then can't be entirely sure that it's not just your mind under stress or being its usual clumsy self.  And by "you" and "your," I mean, of course, "me" and "mine," because this is what happened to me.

I'm pretty sure I've got chemobrain - not so much a matter of memory loss, but of reduced concentration, of talking and having to put a big pause in the middle of a sentence as my mind goes away and comes back.  Any way you slice it, it's not as big a deal for me as hair loss or fatigue or the constant chemotaste in my mouth.  Heck, I've avoided doing anything that requires too much concentration for the past three months, granting some tiny bit of [insert big pause so Margaret can think . . . hmmmm, what's that word that means truth and would sound good here? . . . veracity? . . . merit?  no . . . ah, here it is] credence to the "chemo-vacation" paradigm.  Nevertheless it's a frustrating experience and one that I don't really like to admit to, except of course on a blog read every day by people across the globe. 

I think I cover for it pretty well by pretending to be thinking hard or speaking slowly (feel free to comment otherwise now that you know the truth!).  And even before I identified my increased verbal lethargy as chemobrain, I recognized my occasional difficulty forming sentences as a time to be intentional about having patience with my ailing self.  Cancer takes lots of patience: I've had to be patient when I couldn't cook or sleep through the night or drive or poo or lift heavy objects or return phone calls, not to mention put my whole life on hold for three months to kill Grazelda .  So I have every reason to give myself time to think and to speak, and who cares if someone has to wait a little bit longer to hear what's dawdling through my head?!


Tomorrow's Bonus Bleomycin Wednesday may be my last chemo treatment ever!  And it might not be, but we'll hope for the best - and that I'll feel good enough to go finish fixing my bike afterwards.