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.

Woven into my very fabric

Inge, a weaver, is a German artist friend of my mother’s. The studio in her home is filled with colored wools, cottons, and a large loom.  Watching the shuttle on its journey through the warp again and again is mesmerizing, patterned fabric emerging from colored threads.  And I love fabric, since I seem to collect more than I sew.. but I digress.

I cannot imagine having a first diagnosis of cancer be advanced stage,  an incurable and terminal prognosis.  it happens all the time, numbing and confusing and transforming.  More like a train wreck!   My heart goes out to all who have walked this path. Bless you, bless you.

Instead, I have had a long “adventure” with cancer, its surgeries, chemotherapies, radiations, and doctor visits.  I have learned the meaning of patient in committing hundreds of hours to clinic time. As I acknowledge, and in some fashion celebrate,  twenty years since my first diagnosis in 1993, then a recurrence in 1999, and the stage four determination (it’s baaaack) in 2008, it has been a gradual transformation, adjustment, and acceptance that has been woven into who I am, becoming an integral, defining part of my identity.

I am not cancer.  I am a person living with cancer.

However some of my best living comes from preparing to die.  Let me explain:

I need to make my exit as easy on those who love me as I can.  This means preparation. Organizing pictures, writing the stories behind the stuff in the house (which, thankfully, I am not a saver or collector), compiling my “redbook” (because I don’t like the name black book) which includes contact lists, financial information, family medical history (in case I am not here when the kids need to know), memorial service and obituary data (I haven’t written the obituary yet, but I plan to), and since I have been the family organizer for my parents’ and parent-in-laws’ deaths and I certainly can’t be making all the calls and contacts for my own, I strive to create a plan that is easy for my loved ones to follow.  AFTER they eat and get some good rest.  Helping someone exit this world and dealing with the business of death can be exhausting!  I update my redbook every six months. This is not my opus-magnus, but completing it was one of the most freeing feelings I have ever had.  Yes, I guess I am a bit proud.  It is a gift of love.

For myself, I am doing a lot of writing.  I thought originally I was doing it to leave behind my “voice” for my husband, my children, and grandchildren that will meet me only through my words.  I know  I would have treasured having something like this from my Grandma Victoria who died when I was five.

However, as I write, I realize it really truly is for me.  To write memories and relive them in words,  to craft irreverent rants, sometime devotions, and play with poetry and ponderings, musings, stuff I think about that validates, in some small sense, who I am and have become, woven into my very being.