cancer – day 182

Uff da, so many reminders all the time that I’m in cancer treatment, who could forget and effectively be normal? Anything normal I do gets tainted as well, with neuropathy or fatigue. I tried to go to a tango workshop Wednesday night (I mean, I went to a tango workshop Wednesday night), and I was going crazy from little “chemo brain” forgetfulness and trying to stay focused after the first fifteen minutes or so, which was about when I started feeling excessively fatigued. Trying to stay “on” and give the energy I used to in workshops was just impossible, though I tried my best. After a while even keeping a smile on my face felt impossible, though I kept trying because that’s the Cynthia everyone knows. I did make it through the whole thing though, and then had something of an emotional breakdown in the car on the drive home. It was basically like tears were the only way to let out everything I’d been holding in to get through the workshop. But there’s another side of me that’s glad I went and did as much as I could. It reminded me how determined I can be, and that even if I’m not able to be as on as I would like or can’t take in as much as I used to in workshops, I should still keep trying to do the things I loved before the cancer diagnosis. And if I keep trying, eventually it will either get easier or at the very least I will get more used to it, this dealing with how I feel while trying to do at least some of the things I did before to whatever extent I can.

My head is still foggy and “chemo-brained” to make me forget things or not be able to remember well, and I still go blank a lot more than I think I should. I probably need to get used to a new normal, instead of expecting myself to be just like I was before. Like, I make a heck of a lot of typos now, with my fingers the way they are. But hey, at least Word has a spell checker to help fix my typos before I put anything out there. I also read through things more times than I used to, to correct errors.

I “attended” an online seminar a few days ago that was these doctors talking about and answering questions about chemo brain, and lots of the questions had to do with how long chemo brain can last, and what people can do to reduce the effects, especially with feeling less efficient at work. The general theme coming back from the doctors was that it can last the rest of your life, and that most people make adjustments in how they do things in order to continue to do their jobs, taking down more notes, or spending more time on a task that they used to do more quickly. They had just one example of someone who lost their job as a result of the lingering side effects . . . a trial lawyer who needed to think very quickly on her feet to respond in court. But I guess she moved into a related line of work after that, and found another good job. Other than that, they were talking about examples of how people dealt with the effects of chemo brain to still do their jobs but realizing that it was at a greater level of effort and cost to them than before. It will be interesting to see how I do working full time again, when the time comes. Teaching, now that will be a trip if I still have trouble with this in a few months, needing to think quickly on my feet to answer students’ questions. Or in phone calls with clients. Lucky for me so many of them use e-mail rather than call with questions about their modeling results.