Chemo brain

Today I had my second dose of Chemo. I met with my Oncologist before hand. My counts are back to normal! Yay! He said that it sounds like my first round of Chemo went well so I thought I should believe him. He also said that he wants to wait on giving me a shot to boost my white blood counts. He said that I could still get a fever again because my counts will still go down low but that the shot would help bring the counts back up 24-48 hours sooner and one side effect is bone pain so he does not want to do that to me. So he is not recommending it at this time. I am ok with that because I have been having muscle aches and joint pain and that is annoying enough.

I have been noticing that I can not focus and remember words as much as I used to (no jokes please)! When I was telling the nurse about it this morning she said that around the hospital they call that "Chemo brain". Here are a few examples:

1. While on break yesterday at the After School Matters H.S. program I teach at I walked into and used the boys bathroom and didn't notice until the end of class when I went to the bathroom again with my co-teacher and followed her and saw that it was not the same bathroom I had used an hour ago. No! There were no urinals in the boys bathroom. Just stalls. The security guard looked at me funny on my way it but I was just paranoid that he could tell that my breasts were uneven or that he wondered if I had cancer because I was wearing a scarf.

2. That same day a few hours earlier I was pulling into a gas station. You know how there are usually two entrances and a curb between those two entrances? Well, I know that you are supposed to use the entrance not the curb...but next thing I know I am driving right into the curb. Not going up and over. Just right into the curb. Of course there is oncoming traffic but I had to reverse then drive the wrong way down the road a few feet in order to use this said entrance that I was supposed to use in the first place. I wanted to apologize to the driver by pointing at my bald head mouthing "cancer" but too many other cars were coming so I didn't

3. This morning on the way to Chemo. I started heading to my plastic surgeons office instead of the hospital. They are about twenty minutes apart from each other. You get off at Barrington Rd. off of the Kennedy but the Plastic Surgeon you go South and the hospital you go North.

4. My mom had to walk me from the Oncologist office to the Ambulatory Care unit instead of returning to work because I could not remember at all where Ambulatory Care was.

5. All night tonight I kept asking my students, "Did we do play this game already?" Sadly, half of the time their answer was yes.

I am sure the list goes on and on ... I blame the steroids! Today someone told me that they wished they had drank as much coffee as I had today. I did not have any coffee today!

Will write again soon.

Lots of love.

Judy