It’s not all in your head. If you find it hard to focus, remember things, retrieve words, analyze difficult data, or multi-task like you used to before cancer treatment, you may have chemo-brain.
Doctors used to shrug off patient complaints about foggy thinking and forgetfulness, but finally science is catching up with what patients have long known. Just like chemotherapy can cause problems in the rest of the body, it can do so in the brain, as well, and these problems can last long after treatment is over.
“When you are an accountant and you can only fumble with numbers,” says survivor Jenise, “retirement was the only option….[I]t would have helped if there had been more awareness of what was happening to my brain along with all the other physical ailments overwhelming my body.”
Caregiver Heartbroken says, “My dear father-a once brilliant scientist and multiple myeloma patient-struggled mightily against chemobrain for years. I can’t begin to describe the pain of watching this incredibly gifted man reduced to struggling with the simplest cognitive functions and tasks.”
Chemo brain is the term used to describe the mental “fuzziness” that plagues chemotherapy patients. Symptoms can include memory lapses, trouble concentrating, taking longer to finish things, trouble remembering common words, and inability to multi-task. In essence, the patient notices mental changes in his/her own abilities that are more consistent than what occurs from say, a lack of sleep or off day. Sometimes the fuzziness goes away after chemotherapy ends, but for an estimated 15 percent of patients, the problems stick around. In fact, according to the American Cancer Society, pictures of the brain have shown changes in brain activity of breast cancer survivors treated with chemo when compared to those not treated with chemo, and the changes were still seen on scans 5-to-10 years after treatment stopped.
Just what causes chemo brain? Scientists still don’t know. Most believe that the chemo drugs in combination with the cancer itself and other factors like patient age, stress, low-blood counts, other drugs used in treatment, infection, and anxiety have a lot to do with it. Some early studies suggest that cancer treatment can cause biochemical or anatomical changes in the brain. Hormonal changes as a result of therapy are also highly suspect.
If you’re suffering from chemo brain either during or after treatment, talk to your doctor. The National Institutes of Health reports that early studies with Focalin, a drug used for the treatment of attention deficit disorder, may help. (The treatment group showed weekly improvements in alertness and mental function.) Meanwhile, making some lifestyle adjustments can help you cope. Try the following tips, and consider getting a copy of Dr. Daniel Silverman’s book, “Your Brain After Chemo: A Practical Guide to Lifting the Fog and Getting Back Your Focus.”
- Write everything down. Appointments, things you need to do, phone numbers, addresses, meeting notes, even movies you’d like to see or books you’d like to read. Become an obsessed list maker.
- Exercise your mind. Do puzzles, or learn something new like how to play an instrument or a sport. Practice Sodoku or crosswords in your spare time.
- Get enough sleep.
- Get into a workout program. Regular exercise increases alertness.
- Set up routines. Pick a time to do important things each day, like feed the dog, exercise, take out the trash, mow the lawn, take medications, or brush your teeth. Designate locations for important things like keys, wallets, purses, and papers and make a point to deposit those things in the same place at the end of each day.
- Keep a diary of any memory or mental problems you have. If they become serious, you’ll have a record that may help you in treating the issue or figuring out what’s triggering it.
- Prioritize. If multi-tasking is proving difficult, pick what’s most important and do that first.
- Carry notebooks and/or sticky notes with you and use them.
- Leave messages for yourself on your own voicemail.
Do you have tips for dealing with chemo brain? Please share with us.
Photo courtesy jackdaniels024 via Flickr.com.
