Best of Blog: The Dead Brain Duet

I have been meaning to write a post about the impact of the whole cancer experience (stress, treatment, side effects, etc) on my cognition. It has not been pretty. This is one of the reasons I have so many errors in my posts. (The other reason is that I still don’t understand proper comma usage.) In reading back through my posts, I realize that I’ve written about this with some frequency.

2/25/13: L’eggo my Ergo!

Just as in the commercials for Eggo waffles, someone keeps trying to take something that’s mine. That someone is cancer stress of course. Stress has taken my “ergo”. As I told my husband yesterday, my brain still holds facts (not as many as before) but what is a bigger loss is that I am so infrequently unable to integrate the facts into a conclusion.

Here’s a fictional example to illustrate my point:

“Hmm, I have a patient tomorrow from 1:30 to 2:30 in my office. I have another meeting at 2:30 at Random Elementary School. Since Random Elementary is not my office and I can’t be in two places at the same time, I need to reschedule one of my meetings.”

Here’s how it goes now:

“Hmm, I have a patient tomorrow from 1:30 to 2:30 in my office. I have another meeting at 2:30 at Random Elementary School. I wonder if I have any new email?”

Yes, fortunately, the above was a fictional example. I did not actually schedule myself this way. But I have a jumble of facts in my head at any one time and they are just noise when I can’t make meaning from them. I’ve made lots of other mistakes. With friends and family, I make a lot of comments along the lines of, “Oh yeah” but several minutes to days after I should have made the connection. A couple of weekends ago, my mom mentioned that she was going to go visit her friend at a rehab facility. I understood what she said. I was even aware that the rehab facility is not only in my city but about two miles from my house. I even understood that my parents live in another town. I like my parents. A few days later I told my mom, “Oh yeah, when you were visiting June, I should have invited you over for a visit afterwards.”

Yes, I should have but stupid cancer took my ergo.

L’eggo my ergo!

3/28/13: Like ball bearings in the back of an empty moving van

I have so many thoughts, meaningful ones, and I just can’t get them organized into a post. Boo, brain! Oh, I take that back. Brain, you’ve been through a lot and it’s okay for you to take a rest. Remember when this happened after our last major surgery, the mastectomy? Other body parts need a lot more energy now for healing. Frontal lobes, you are low on the priority list right now. I’ve had a very expensive and extensive stabbing by a highly trained surgeon. Parts were rearranged. My spare tire was made into a headlight. It’s only natural that there would be less energy for thoughts other than self-preserving ones, like “Hey, Self, remember no drunken table dancing until six weeks past surgery!”

I have the ingredients for a meaningful, uplifting, and moving post but neither a bowl nor spoon by which I can mix them into blog magic.

This reminds me of something. I remember when I lived in North Carolina, there was column in the local paper that was meant to be a place holder. However, the real article never made it to the published edition of the paper. So there was a column that read something along the lines of, “This article will be of interest to a wide variety of readers, blah, blah, blah.”

So until I can get my ball bearing thoughts organized, here’s a placeholder:

This blog post will be so absorbing, humorous, and meaningful that each reader will be ever happy and ever healthy. And neither the reader, the reader’s children, or the reader’s children’s children, will ever again experience being stuck in traffic. Finally, drunken table dancing will always result in only positive consequences.

You’re welcome.