<
https://slate.com/technology/2022/09/what-brain-fog-feels-like-chemo-brain-cancer-treatment.html>
"Last weekend, I tweeted, “Brain fog is a cute word for brain damage,” and
surprisingly, thousands of people responded to it. I had a few down-thread
conversations with folks who have also struggled with “fog” and felt that most
people don’t understand the gravity of what it really feels like to have your
cognition altered.
My life was changed dramatically by brain fog—often called “chemo brain” in the
cancer community—and I thought I would write this in case it might be helpful
to others for me to say more about the losses, transformation, and gifts that
came into my world when my brain changed.
In 2017, I was diagnosed with an impossible lymphatic leukemia that was not
present in my lymph or blood, but only in my central nervous system, floating
in my cerebrospinal fluid, forming thousands of lesions up and down my spinal
cord. I had two inpatient rounds of methotrexate, one year of rituximab
antibodies, and almost three years of an oral chemotherapy called
Imbruvica—which I took at a higher dose than usual in hopes that it would cross
the blood–brain barrier. Since nothing about what was happening to me was
usual, I was also allergic to Imbruvica, and this required that I take large
doses of steroids and antihistamines off and on over the course of treatment to
manage allergic side effects.
So perhaps we can’t blame it on the chemo alone. It could have been any of
these treatments, or all of them in combination, plus bereavement and trauma,
and menopause, and even the cancer itself, I suppose. And why would I blame the
meds at all since I am here and alive today because of them? I say this only
because “chemo brain” may be a misnomer if we are getting strict in our
definitions, here."
Via Violet Blue’s
Pandemic Roundup: September 29, 2022
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-72625064
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
