Did you know Trader Joe's has a chocolate bar that is toffee with vitamins?
I was pretty amazed. And more than a little grossed out.
Till I realized that Vitamins actually wasn't printed on the package at all. It said Toffee with Walnuts. (Much better!)
Aw, chemo: You delightful bastard. As if cancer wasn't bad enough, the chemo is affecting my brain function, leaving me foggy, tongue tied, absent minded, gappy in my memory, and now dodgy in the reading department. Like so many of my eyelashes and eye brow hairs, little bits of my brain are flitting away...
As you can imagine, this makes work a bit difficult. I'm chipping away at two conferences -- one coming up next month and another that isn't till December. Some days all my neurons are firing happily and I'm able to succinctly respond to the emails in my in-box, update the agenda, dispatch requests, schedule phone calls. I'm a gettin'-shit-done kinda gal. Other days, it takes me an hour to respond to even a couple of emails and I have trouble remembering what needed to be done, or even figuring out where to write the list of things-to-do-on-a-better-brain-function-day (post-it? notebook? Word doc?).
I can't keep track of play dates. I can't write a decent blog post. I'm not cooking much these days, but I imagine following recipes with more than 6 ingredients might be interesting. This is more my speed lately.
Multi-tasking? Forget it.
Is it depressing? Hell yes. Though it helps to know that chemo brain is a real thing and I'm not alone. There are whole books on the subject. Doctors say for some, chemo brain goes away once treatment concludes. For others, the effects can linger for years.
Last night, I offered my husband a cup of Ritalin tea instead of Chamomile tea. Luckily it was just a word slip-up. Keeps it interesting for those around me, I guess!
One more dose of chemo to go. I can do this!
