Chemo brain blues

I have been going through one of the most difficult periods of this whole journey so far, so please excuse my silence. No, nothing hurts. I am feeling fine, except the pain in my feet. I have lost the 10kgs (22 pounds for those who don't know) I gained during the treatment and am determined to lose many more. I look good and feel better every day. So, what's the problem? Chemo brain, that's what.

It's the most insidious thing I have ever experienced in my life. I knew my brain wasn't working when I had the chemotherapy, and when I forgot things and couldn't concentrate on heavy reading. I remember I decided to use the free time I had to improve my knowledge of one of my softwares, but as I was reading the handbook it dawned on me that, while I was reading the words, nothing went in the brain. That was my first conscious recognition that I had a serious problem somewhere.

That was 3-4 months ago. Since then I had that wonderful holiday in the States with Tunde, the family and all my old friends and on my return I felt like a new woman. I was hot to trot.

So, I went back to my old life. I have two homestay students, I do some temping work for the NSW Health Department doing phone surveys and I am working on a freelance application story for a multinational company. Amazing, isn't it? Yes it would be if everything went according to plan, but it ain't.

The students are lovely and the phone interviewing, while more tiring than expected, is fine too. It's the freelance story that I am having terrible difficulties with.

When I interviewed the scientists, I realised I lost part of what they were saying as they were saying it. Normally, I am a very good interviewer, but when I played back these interviews to transcribe I felt embarassed by how stupid I sounded as I flaundered from question to question.

No matter, I did my research and read everything, and prepared to write. The problem was that each time I sat down I forgot the technical details of the project. I forgot names of products, institutions and relationships. I couldn't put the story together. I spent hours on the first three introductory paragraphs, just to take my mind off my frustration.

A couple of days on, I have two beautiful paragraphs (down from three), a story outline and no idea how I am going to finish this thing by Monday (it's Saturday now).

This is not like me at all. Normally, I would have had this story done a week ago. It's not difficult, I used to do these routinely when I was editing Electrical Engineer magazine.

In my frustration, I turned to the internet and googled up 'chemo brain'.

It's called 'post-chemotherapy cognitive impairment', and apparently affects 20-30 per cent of people who had chemotherapy. Recent studies have shown that this effect is real and measurable. The chemo shrinks the brain and the effects can persist for up to 10 years!!! (give me a break!), but a Japanese study found that for most people the they are reversible after about 1-2 years.(Great!)

Well, this isn't going to help me with my current predicament, but I had an idea about how to sideline this handicap for this instance. For the near future I will have to stop writing freelance stories.

It's the darnest thing: I can edit, I can organise, write this blog and fiction stories, but I can't piece technical information into a coherent narrative. Very interesting, but I wish it would happen to someone else! (sigh)

(I put up a link to Chemo Brain on Google, check it out)