so now, it's over 3 years, and so far, still no cancer. I'm alive twice as long as they forecast (or endcast?), and it's strange.
I'm technically "cured," but 30 months of chemotherapy isn't nothing. It changes you. My energy level is crazy, sometimes okay, sometimes I can hardly get up stairs. If I go out with friends to a noisy restauarant, it's physically taxing -- the next day I'm likely to run a big energy debt, a hangover from noise and trying to talk loudly.
Other thing is memory. Short-term memory is shot (I have to write everything down), and I have some lacunae for things is knew long ago. It's weird.
Biggest pain in the ass is that I spend most of my time looking for things. That gets tiresome. Seems like every time I go to get something from one room, I get distracted and forget why. Then when I go back to where I came from, I recall what I went after the first time. Sometimes it seems that I have to do everything twice, and that turns out to be especially frustrating for the spouse. She has been such a rock, I really hate to put her through more crap.
So, on the one hand, I'm doing far better than I've a right to.
But if you know a cancer survivor, don't expect him or her to be the same person that he or she was before the cancer. The treatments leave lasting effects. One person I read said chemo-brain is like wearing a hat of fog. I'm trying to resurrect some of what I learned when studying philosophy, and man, is it tough to remember things. But I keep trying!
