Chemo Brain is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Receiving chemotherapy.

I have to be honest. Until I started taking chemotherapy, I didn’t really understand chemotherapy. I knew a little about how the treatments were given, and had a vague understanding that the chemo drugs somehow killed cancer. I also had a vision in my head based on what I had seen in movies and read in books, which is that chemo patients spend most of their time puking and sweating and sleeping. So when I was facing my first treatment of chemo, like with so many other experiences I’ve encountered since being diagnosed with cancer, I was scared to death.

So the first thing I did to overcome my fear before my first chemo infusion was to try and educate myself about chemotherapy. I had to be very careful in this endeavor, because I have a tendency to overdose on information when I am researching something, especially if it is medically related. For example, my OB/GYN had to instruct me to throw out the “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” book during my first pregnancy because I was driving him insane with questions such as, “I read in the book that hiccups could be a symptom of a knot in the umbilical cord and last night I had really bad hiccups, but then I wasn’t sure if the book meant it was bad for me to have hiccups, or for the baby to have hiccups, so I’m thinking we should do another ultrasound just to be sure.” Jeez. I’m lucky he still stuck it out with me until the delivery. I especially had to steer clear of the Internet, as it is an endless source of frightening information for any kind of condition. For every piece of valuable information I might find, there are ten pieces of scary anecdotal evidence regarding a horrible side effect of chemotherapy. As my OB/GYN told me, “There are some things you are just better off not knowing.” I made a conscious decision not to binge and purge on every result from a Google search of the word chemotherapy, and stick with the information I received directly from my oncologist.

My oncologist and I had decided that the best course of chemotherapy for me was a combination of three different drugs to be administered over 16 rounds of treatment. First I would receive four rounds of the drugs Adriamycin and Cytoxan, and then 12 rounds of the drug Taxol. Cancer grows through rapid abnormal cell division, and chemotherapy works by killing those fast-replicating cells. Unfortunately, the chemo drugs don’t know the difference between healthy and diseased cells, and this is where all the potentially scary side effects from chemo come in to play. The healthy cells affected by chemo include white and red blood cells and platelets. A decrease in white blood cells increases a person’s susceptibility to infection, and a decrease in red blood cells can contribute to fatigue. The obliteration of rapidly dividing cells is the culprit in hair loss, which, as I discussed in my last article, is the side effect most commonly associated with chemotherapy. Other side effects include nausea and vomiting, mouth sores, nasal congestion, constipation and/or diarrhea, and loss of appetite. I know, it all sounds like a real party!

The bottom line from what I learned was this: chemotherapy drugs are not fuzzy kitten gentle drugs, they are big, bad, biker gang tough drugs designed to kill everything in their path. So I certainly did not expect to feel like running a marathon after receiving my first chemo infusion, but even after all my research I still wasn’t totally sure what to expect. The one big caveat that everyone told me was that everyone has different body chemistry, and so everyone has the opportunity to react differently to the chemo. The other thing I was reminded over and over was that oncologists have become very good at managing many of the chemo side effects with very sophisticated drugs. The first round was pretty rough, and it took a few days to work out the right balance of medicines to keep me from being sick.

At this point I’ve finished the four rounds of A/C and one round of Taxol, and like just about every other experience in life, there have been good days and bad days. I’ve experienced many of the side effects that I read about, but have managed to escape a good number of them as well. I’ve had some moments of being the puking, sweating, sleeping chemo patient from the movies, but I’ve also gone for a few long runs and a few much-needed “Mom’s Nights Out”. Maybe the most irritating of all the side effects has been “Chemo Brain”, an actual condition where the patient experiences forgetfulness and short term memory loss from the chemo. The low point: stopping with my underwear around my knees and momentarily not being able to remember if I was in the middle of putting them on or taking them off. The high point: I semi-understand the plot of “Lost”. And I’ve managed to not think too much about the other potential side effects that I didn’t discuss previously that could result from chemotherapy, namely heart failure and developing leukemia. I decided that those are almost too scary to think about, especially when I’m already dealing with the scary notion of having cancer. My old OB would be proud that I’ve finally taken his advice and agreed, “. . . there are some things you are better off not knowing.”

It’s not too late to register for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Indy, being held on April 17, 2010 at IUPUI Library Lawn & Military Park. Please go to www.komenindy.org for more information.