I am so bored of cancer right now. This may seem like a strange perspective to take, but honestly, what a waste of time!
I am having a bed day, back with the bone pains from my white blood cell-boosting injections and really I would rather be up and at ‘em than under a duvet.
I’m not very good at doing nothing, it is rare for me to even just sit and watch when the TV is on; often I will be knitting or sewing or something at the same time and so enforced stoppages due to lack of energy, oomph or horrible pain, quite frankly make me annoyed.
It may seem that these times would be an ideal situation in which to get on with some writing – this being what I do, and what a lovely thought and in more lucid moments such as this I will try to; but I am going to tell you about chemo brain.
Chemo brain – sounds like an excuse, something someone has made up to gloss over a moment of silliness but it isn’t.
In fact, out of everything that has been going on, I have found it to be one of the more distressing side effects of the chemotherapy.
Part of what happens is just blankly losing words or the ends of sentences. I can be talking: yabber, yabber, normal flow of espousing and then [ ] nope, there’s nothing at the end of the line. A cliff edge has appeared and there are no words available just a big gaping chasm of nothing. Very annoying.
For me though, I have found difficulties in reading and writing worse. As someone who has lived their entire life reading avidly and writing to the point where I own more notebooks than is probably reasonable (I am a self-confessed stationery lover – nothing pleases me quite so much as a lovely new notebook and pen or pencil), it has been quite distressing to find I have days where I just can’t do it. I can be reading and it occurs to me that something isn’t right. I’ll read it again. Nope, still not correct – but why or how? I can’t make it out. Letters, numbers, symbols, they are there but can I unjumble them to make sense? No.
The same happens with writing. There I am either scribbling with pen or tapping away on my keyboard, thinking I am putting down what is in my head but what comes out can be completely different. Again, I look at it – something is wrong, but as to what and how to put it right, I can’t decipher.
This is indeed a big reason I find myself bored and grumpy with cancer: when I am physically a bit too depleted to do much, how unreasonable that I can’t sit quietly and read and write either. Hrumph!
Chemo brain manifests in other ways too, especially in forgetfulness and the inability to concentrate. I currently live my life by lists, lists, and lists, a few more lists, notebooks, calendars and journals. This is not just an excuse for another notebook (although I have nearly finished a couple, perhaps it is time for a new one…) The first problem is remembering to put something on the list and then to look at it. When I bring home my mountainous bag of medicines after each chemo treatment I write down exactly what I must take on what day, when and how many otherwise who knows what would happen. I am very lucky in that MOTH has taken on delivery and logistics of my cancer and has a far better idea of what’s going on than I do.
There are many other ways in which the brain gets affected by chemotherapy. My eyesight is shocking now and I struggle to read things even with my glasses on some days. My spatial awareness (never the best anyway) is dreadful and I have to admit I have only driven once since starting chemo and I felt so hyper aware of not really being confident of anything around me that I’m not sure how safe I was to do so. There is unbalance and wobbliness and the clumsies too – I am forever dropping and knocking things, bashing myself onto any available surface and I think MOTH has been somewhat wary at times when I’ve been cooking meals and wielding a knife.
There are many other ways in which chemotherapy disrupts and rattles the brain but I think you perhaps get the idea.
The flip side to all this is: when you have enforced time where you have to do nothing it can open up new thoughts and processes. When you can’t do much, you pay attention more to what there is. I have had a billion new ideas of things I want to do and try (ok, I can’t do them right now, but they will be there when I can). You have to take life slower and end up paying closer attention to things and I have found that by doing so, you can start to see the things that really, really are important. Yes, I haven’t been able to clean the bathroom, do the ironing or get around to exercising (although I have managed to avoid that one for a lot longer than the cancer!) but I have noticed and felt things in more detail than ever and I am learning patience (not my forte as MOTH with tell you) and the ability to not stress so, for example when running late or not getting something quite right. Perhaps I will become a serene and laid back kind of person at the end of it all, or maybe I will be full on rushing to do all the things I want to do now but can’t. I don’t know, but I do know that life doesn’t stop just because you are having a bed day.
When you can’t find the word you need, let it go, one will come eventually – it might even be a better one. When you can’t physically get up and garden, visualise and meditate on your ideal outside space and use that time to calm and focus yourself inside.
When things are not as you want, do what you can at the time.
(You may have guessed that I have had to employ the use of both spell-check and MOTH to make my blogs readable in any discernible sense. Before doing so on this blog here are some words I wrote and could not make sense of or why they weren’t right: notesbooks (could I see the extra ‘s’? No.) unbalabce (I couldn’t figure out at all for a long time if any of these letters were right) kocking (kept wondering why I was talking about cooking until eventually realised it was meant to be knocking.)
*MOTH Man Of The House