Todays blog may contain non sensical rambling, unfinished sentences, pointless points of view and in general a huge blob of words on a page. All this is brought to you by a strange and little studied phenomenon called “Chemo Brain” if you understand how chemotherapy works, then you will easily understand chemo brain. If, like me, you had no prior understanding of how it works, let me help you…Chemotherapy works by killing rapidly dividing cells. Unfortunately it doesn’t know the difference between a good cell and a bad cell. So, while it’s busy killing cancer cells, it also kills hair cells ( why you lose your hair). Stomach and intestinal cells (nausea). Bone marrow ( which its constantly producing blood cells). Skin (excessively dry skin) And the mother of all cells: Brain cells (chemo brain)…If you tend to be on the ditzy side of the road you probably will not notice, but if your pride yourself on getting a high score on Facebook Genius tests, beating the crap out out of your friends at Words With Friends and are on level 155 at Candy Crush your probably Mensa material and this sudden inability to finish a sentence or remember what an egg ( the thing that falls out of a chicken) is called can be unsettling or even frightening. There’s no way around theses side effects..You endure them the best you can and hope your family, friends and your local barista understands. Me at Starbucks: Can I have a large ice tea,hot, with half lemonade and half mocha frappe in a small cup with two pumps of any flavor except the flower ones)…Flower ones??
My platelets have come up a bit so i’m back at chemo this week. Had Thanksgiving week off which was nice. My older kiddies came home for a few days. The sudden increase in noise in the house was really nice and the dogs got a ton of attention which they crave.
I’m sitting in The Chemo Cafe today getting fluids for dehydration and nausea meds for obvious reasons I wont bore you with. listening to the various conversations always fascinates me. lots of chatter about The Eagles which I can’t follow..There seems to be a battle of the “side effects” going on as well. Who has it worse, who has more, who needs more meds. All I hear is I need I need I need I want…I don’t engage when I’m here. I find a corner chair and press the button on the chair that makes a sign comes down from the ceiling that says, ” Don’t bother her or you’ll be sorry”. I’m here to save myself and thats all…
Please excuse the brevity of todays blog..I’m still hot and heavy with neuropathy so using my hands is a challenge. I’m not savvy enough to use the voice thingy…..
