Chemo Brain .... Not Such Fun Facts ( 16 )

              When do we have to be there? Where are we going? Why?
 CHEMO BRAIN. This is what your brain can be like when you are going through chemo treatment. Foggy, dull, fuzzy, unfocused, short attention span.  Those are just a few ways to describe what is going on in your head. 

It's not really a case of No Signal Found ...  it's more of a Loose Connection. What's going  on? What just happened here?  Did I miss something?  Simply put ... IT'S CONFUSION AND LACK OF CONCENTRATION.  And it will hit you in the strangest ways.

Just to give you an example, If you eat eggs, you probably know these are fried eggs ... over easy.  I recently went to a diner for breakfast with my hubby and couldn't for the life of me remember the term ... over easy. I was grasping for words when I spoke to the waitress. I told her, "You know, when the yolks of the eggs have a thin white cover over them." She finally figured out what I meant.  It can be so damn frustrating ....

Paying bills? Get help. When your head is swimming in Chemo Brain (my brain fog starts to set in around the 3rd day after my chemo treatment and lasts til about the 10th day) let someone else pay the bills if you can. I'm the one who usually takes care of the bills (making payments both by check and online) but when my brain is temporarily out of commission, hubby takes over. Yet, there are alternative ways to deal with this. If you can swing it, pay your bills before a chemo treatment or when the fog has completely lifted. If you can't, try to enlist a good friend or relative you trust to help you manage paying your bills.

Well, that's the scoop on CHEMO BRAIN.  My 3rd Chemo treatment is tomorrow, November 17th.  I'll let you know how things went in a week or so. 

Everything Tastes Yucky When You're Going Through Chemo! ( 15 )

Bleh! That's usually how everything tastes when you're going through Chemo. It's been 14 days since my second Chemo. I really didn't have any kind of an appetite following my first Chemo, but when I had started to feel better, at least I had no trouble eating. 

This second time around, food tasted ... awful. When I started to feel hungry around Day 5, I found that when I'd taken only one bite of something, I often would have to scrape the dish and toss the food out. Everything was trial and error. I found that things that were "sweet" were easier to eat. 

Things that seem to work:
Pancakes and syrup
muffins - really like the crumb cake topped muffin from Dunkin D. 
canned fruit - especially peaches
applesauce
hard candies
Raisin bread with jelly

Meats vary:
grilled chicken tolerable
chicken noodle soup with crackers or bread OK
SALT also became my new best friend. I am not normally a salt lover, but some foods tasted better with a good dose of salt added.

NO WAY FOODS:
beef
eggs (except hard boiled)
anything fried 

Oh, did I mention mouth sores? They really make eating very difficult. They started on Day 4 after my second Chemo. Had lovely white dots on the side of my tongue.  Salt water & baking soda rinses 4-5 times a day really helped.  The pain from the sores started to lesson by the 12th day.

Now I am 2 weeks past my 2nd Chemo and my appetite is pretty good and I am eating pretty well.  Plain water still has an after taste, but a squirt or two of MIO really helps.