Chemo Brain

I just did something that I never did before. After being cleared to fly, I made airplane reservations for Christmas to visit my husband's relatives.  I must have clicked the button to search all local airports, because I accidentally made reservations to fly out of San Francisco, not San Jose, like I usually do.

Not realizing this, we went to San Jose airport today to catch our flight.  Of course, we couldn't bring up the flight of the computer and I couldn't figure out why.  So we went to the agent who, of course, told us that our flight was out of San Francisco.

Ack!  Chemo brain!  And radiation brain!

We were two hours ahead of when our flight departed, but the agent said we would never make it.  There were no other flights which we could book - everything was sold out.  There was no way that I was going to screw up Christmas!

So.... we make a split second decision, walked out of the airport and grabbed a taxi up to San Francisco airport.  We asked the taxi driver if he could get us there in an hour.  One hundreds dollars and an hour later, and managing to get past an accident on Highway 101, we managed to get to there there with 50 minutes to get through check in and security. Check in went fine and security was pretty light, despite what the San Jose agent had told us.  We made it with 5 minutes to spare!  That was the closest shave ever!  Thank God it was a domestic flight.

I've never been so glad to get on a plane!

That's probably the dumbest thing I've ever done. Next time I'll ask Duane to review!

Radiation and Chemo Finished

I haven't done much blogging of late.  The chemo was okay, but the radiation kicked my you-know-what!  I have done a lot of sleeping over the course of the last six weeks. 

By week #2 of the radiation/chemo, my speech, which was starting to come back, was already impaired again.  They put me back on steroids to help with that, but I argued for a half dose because I never sleep when I'm on steroids.  I just couldn't go without sleep for five more weeks.

By week #4, my hair was coming out in large clumps on the left side of my head.  Still, I had a comb over so it didn't look too bad. But it was obviously thinning. 


During all of this time, I was going to to speech therapy, motor therapy and occupational therapy, as well as orthopedic therapy for my knee.  I had medical appointments almost every day, except for the weekends. 

Speech therapy was really useful to learn how to talk again, but the improvements were tiny and took a long time. Fortunately, I had my son coaching me on my words.  Best coach I ever had!

Motor therapy was for my right side, which has decreased fine sensation, decreased ability to feel temperature, and a certain amount of numbness, similar to a stroke.  My gait was also uneven, but not so uneven that I had a risk of falling.  That was nice to find out, although the steroids caused havoc with my long muscles.  I couldn't get out of a chair without pushing up on my arms, but I was prohibited from doing squats because of my knee, to strengthen my quads.  A lot of straight leg lifts, as well as side to side leg muscles. My legs are really weak now.

The occupational therapy was for my typing skills.  Because of the slight decrease in strength and the numbness in my right hand, I have having difficulty typing, aside from the problem of spelling. I am no longer a 120 wpm perfect typist. I also have great difficulty opening bottles and jars now.

It also took months of rehab on my knee.  I can almost get it straight, but not quite.  This will take more time.

The best part of being finished with radiation and chemo is that I'm now cleared to fly up to my husband's family and spend Christmas with them!  We leave on Saturday!  Time to get a mani-pedi and a trim.  I won't say a "haircut", but there's not much left to cut.