Chemo Brain Fry

When I attended a recent seminar on cancer, one breakout session discussed the effects of chemo brain…that fuzzy, in-the-cloud, what-was-I-saying-doing-thinking state that is a side effect of chemo drugs during treatment, and here is the bad news, linger for weeks, months, years!  Needless to say, I found it disconcerting to discover that I have been in chemo-brain land for over TWENTY years now, ⅓ of my life.  Endocrine therapies and chemo drugs all mess with the gray matter..maybe blessedly  so that I am rather oblivious to my impaired functioning.  Except when I can’t recall a name, find my glasses, or put my hands on that bill that is due in a few days!

I started to think about all that I might have accomplished if chemo hadn’t shaked and baked my neurons.  Here’s a partial list (because I’ve forgotten the rest.)

1. Competed as a champion on Jeopardy, harnessing the useless information and facts that have filled my brain for years and are now all hopelessly irretrievable.  Except the capital of Kansas is Topeka.
2. Raised perfect children, and while they are nearly so, a perfectly functioning mother would have said the right words at the right time…or more likely, known when to not speak at all.
3. Because I would be impeccably organized, veggie seeds would be planted at the optimal time, I would take advantage of sales to stock up on socks that would always be paired, my financial records would reside in alphabetical and dated files, and all the time saved looking for things would be channeled toward tatting my own lace.  Or something obscurely creative.
4. Like writing the great American novel, some opus magnus or magnus opus.  I love words, but they are not cooperative in coming together in a way that earns me any recognition or money.
5. As a retired math teacher, I would develop a new algebra based on premise that one CAN divide by zero.  I mean, Pappus of Alexandria (and others) eliminated parallel lines (all lines meet at infinity) and developed projective geometry.  The number i  was created to represent the non-existent square root of negative 1, leading to complex numbers, so why couldn’t I revolutionize algebra by creating a representation of division by zero?  Oh, I could have, had chemo brain not intervened.

The “what might have beens” really don’t matter, do they?  Like Stuart, wherever he comes from, I get pleasure from,”Look what I can do!” in spite of chemo brain. Yes. Yes. Yes.