I have always been a champion multi-tasker.

Plowing my way through multiple tasks with children talking to me and the phone ringing at the same time has never daunted me.  Under pressure, my thoughts become crystal clear and razor sharp.

Or, at least, they used to.

As you know, I have been working on rebuilding my strength since fighting my good fight against the big C over this past year and a half.  My body is returning, energy is returning, stamina is painstakingly returning.  And, obviously, my hair is returning – in massive springy curls.  🙂

My brain is a new animal, a stranger to me:  I feel more like Pinky than I do Brain.  This is truly bizarre, and immensely frustrating.  I need people to stop talking when I process information.  I’ve become that kid who needs a quiet room in which to study.

Words elude me – often.  Yesterday, I spent so long – midsentence, mind you – searching for the word pliometrics that my daughter asked me if I had fallen asleep standing up.

Who is this person?  Not me, that’s for sure.  I’ve spent most of this week feeling a bit on edge, out of sorts – and it hit me, all at once, that I am trying to re-learn how to think like MYSELF.

This is not what I would call fun.

Everyone warned me about “chemo brain”: that phenomenon in which you become suddenly forgetful, or hazy on the details while undergoing Chemotherapy.  For the woman who used to be able to replay text or conversation with the accuracy of a recording, this fog is absolutely unacceptable!

The fun side is that my Lara can tell me stories she told me during chemo, and I am as entertained as if I am hearing them for the first time.  I suppose I am hearing them for the first time.  Whereas before I had an emotional processing lag on big events, the emotions coming racing to the forefront while my logic struggles to play catch up.

So, working on rebuilding body AND mind.  Currently living through a massive dependence on lists, reading a ton and then trying to restate what I have read, and working on what I have always struggled with – remembering new names.

This is the strange journey I am taking through retraining my brain to overcome the shock of all of those surgeries and the toxicity of the medication it took to give me this new life I have.

I am frustrated, but still so grateful.  And thank God for my little family, who mostly approach this with humour and grace: otherwise, they would probably be about ready to smack me upside the head.  🙂

Blessings to you all…