What Chemo-Brain has Done to Me

Chemo-brain. Some doctors dismiss it as nothing, and those that recognize it is a problem seem to be unable to do anything about it. If you're alive, you're not in pain, and you can keep food down then everything else is just something to cope with not resolve. The cognitive difficulties most often reported are in the storage and retrieval of memories, facts, words, numbers. It can effect both long term and short term memories as old doors are locked and the keys lost, and new doors cannot be unlocked at all. Ask me my social security number and I'll probably blank out for a minute trying to remember it. Ask me my phone number and it might take me a couple of minutes. Ask me my cell phone number and all you'll get is a helpless and frustrated stare.

Of all the side effects of treatment, chemo-brain probably ranks number one for me, and it's because my identity and self-worth are entirely wrapped up with my intellect. It's pathetic and even considered by some to be a vice, but it is the truth. All my life I have thought of myself as intelligent. My parents and my brothers are crazy smart and even though I had to work harder and could never achieve what came so easily to them I still felt I could hold my own. I loved being the smart kid. I loved knowing the answer, knowing more, asking questions, and sharing what I knew with others. I have come to realize that this arrogance is probably what made me such an unpopular kid, but that's a different story.

My entire person was built on a foundation that I was smart. I might not have been pretty, athletic, or fun, but at least I was smart. So when chemo started chipping away at my brain it also chipped away at my being. I was losing myself and what was worse was that nobody seemed to notice or care. I'd lose my train of thought or use the wrong word and people would laugh and tease me. I'd struggle to remember something I was certain I knew and people couldn't understand why I became so frustrated and angry. Even those closest to me told me I was making too much out of it, that I wasn't "stupid."

But I knew I was losing it, losing things, losing knowledge. I knew my head wasn't working right, and that nobody else seemed to register it threw me. Perhaps I was delusional all along. If nobody has noticed that I became slower, more forgetful, and more everything, then maybe I wasn't that smart to begin with.

Yet, I refuse to believe that. I guess I still hold strongly to the delusion that I once was pretty smart, and it pains me that people don't see it. It pains me that they laugh at my mistakes without knowing that it's more than just a mistake, that just a couple of years ago I never would have made such a mistake. Writing these posts pains me because I cannot put into words exactly what I mean and I know I was once able to do so with ease.