Don't you remember?

Imagine, if you will, that you are sitting quietly at home watching TV. It’s one of your favorite shows, and you are enjoying this new episode. On a commercial, you grab your cell to send a quick text. Only you cannot remember WHO you were going to text? You think, “maybe I’ll send the text on the next commercial” but….. WHAT am I watching again? You can’t remember what show you put on or what has happened up to this point.

A little while later, your husband tells you a story about something that happened at work today. It’s entertaining, and you share a laugh. But a few minutes later you ask him to repeat it because you cannot (for anything) remember what he said.

This happening a few times may be comical, “I must be getting old”. But this happening over and over again, multiple times a day, day after day is scary, frustrating and hard to handle. You second guess your sense of direction when driving somewhere you have driven hundreds of times. You write down absolutely everything important, not trusting yourself to remember. You are embarrassed when you have to ask someone to repeat something, again. And you are doubly embarrassed when someone recounts a story they know they have told you already but you have zero recollection of it. If this sounds familiar, then you too may be taking these cancer meds.

So many of the women I have encountered in my cancer journey say the same thing; one of the most frustrating side effects of the AI meds is the crazy, and unsettling “brain fog”. Words cannot be recalled in the middle of sentence, names are forgotten, important dates are forgotten, despite my best intentions. I can forget what I am doing while I am doing it! Or forget the point of a story half-way through telling it! With my family’s history of dementia, it’s always in the back of mind that perhaps I’m developing memory issues for that reason even though I know it’s the medications. This is no different than being around someone who is sick and then being overly aware of a slightly itchy throat the next day – it’s just on your mind.

I am told that these side effects will ease once I stop taking the medication however, there are two more years of medication to go! Or is it a year and a half? I can’t remember….