Chemo Brain

I received a card from my good friend Nicole Gulick on Saturday that said she was running a half marathon on Sunday the 14th. She said she would wear something for me and run for me. Sunday morning I received this picture:

Then a few hours later I received another picture from Nicole:

NICOLE KICKED BUTT!!! 2nd place out of ~3200 female runners. I can barely type this without tears because that is AWESOME. Her average pace for 13.1 miles was twice as fast as my pace for 1 mile. Not that I'm comparing, I know I'm not a fast runner.  She pushed herself and I will do the same, to make it through my treatment and come out of this a winner, a survivor.

Ahh yes, I believe Chemo Brain has hit. I thought for sure it'd hit further down the road but it seems to have shown it's silly little face early on. I don't know the "normal" point at which people start to feel they have Chemo Brain but for me, it is now. The reason I know this is I did a quick google search on Chemo Brain and this is what I found: Excerpt: Leroy Sievers shared his experience with chemo brain. He described these symptoms as:

"It’s a little bit like the feeling you get when you’ve had one or two drinks too many, and you don’t want to be drunk. You will try to talk yourself into clarity but it doesn’t always work."

And guess what? This is exactly how I feel. I tried to explain it as feeling like I'm drunk, but I'm not. And when I got in the car to drive it was like, I don't think I should be driving but I'm sober! Needless to say I will be using the Mom's Taxi chauffeur services pretty often.

I realize now that my exhaustion on Thursday, Friday and Saturday was a side effect of Chemo. I pretty much slept every chance I got. Sunday morning Helena, Micah and I went to church and then lounged around the rest of the day. My nausea has not been too bad and I'm thankful for that.

Tomorrow I go for a follow up visit with my surgeon.  I’m hoping he removes my port-a-cath stitches because I really feel like I’ve got fishing wire sticking out of my neck!